Talk:Transgender disenfranchisement in the United States

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2020 and 10 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Acano9.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:23, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Is "transgender disenfranchisement" a neologism?
I found only 513 mentions of "transgender disenfranchisement" in a Google search query, and most of them are from Wikipedia mirrors. Would it be possible to find a better title for this article? Jarble (talk) 01:00, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Would "Disenfranchisement of transgender people" be better? It gets slightly more hits. There doesn't seem to be a 'common name' (in the Wikipedian meaning of those words) for the phenomenon, so it seems like we're left to come up with a descriptive title, which are allowed to be "invented specifically for articles". -sche (talk) 02:07, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Straightening out a lead
I think at the very least we need to have a lead for this important topic that has a citation and doesn't have two tags casting the whole subject into doubt. Right now it's Transgender disenfranchisement is the practice of creating or upholding barriers that keep transgender individuals from voting and therefore restrict the principles of universal suffrage. And two tags swiftly follow: [citation needed][neologism?] It just looks downright odd. In fact, I'm just going to remove those tags. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 01:56, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Neutrality tag
Can someone who put the tag there please come out and explain why it is relevant and necessary for this article? Thanks. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 01:59, 15 December 2015 (UTC)




 * This article is laden with political polemics and no source material.


 * Some examples,


 * the Republican Party tried to position voter fraud as an important issue in American politics, to be solved by schemes for voter identification.[5] It has never been established as a substantive problem, despite Republican rhetoric about it as an issue.
 * This is a political smear with a poor citation and it's own conclusion.


 * Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002. This resulted in many states passing similar voter identification laws, which generally result in reducing the vote among poorer or immigrant voters.
 * No citation


 * Many policies related to changing an individual's gender on identity documents in the United States emphasize surgical status and require the individual to produce evidence that they have undergone surgical sex reassignment surgery. Such procedures are often extremely costly and rarely covered by health insurance companies
 * No citation.


 * of the people who identify as transgender, only 21% have been able to update all of their IDs and records with their correct gender. Some 33% have not updated any of their IDs or records.
 * No citation.


 * While the Social Security cards themselves do not list gender on them and therefore provide a hopeful option for transgender voters
 * Encyclopedia articles are not about hope and change nor political stumping.''


 * In accordance with the Help America Vote Act, some states allow voters to use two forms of identification that only list name and address, such as a utility bill.[6] While this generally alleviates the issue of having to change one’s gender on a document, it poses another issue as the transgender community struggles with the homelessness of many of its members.
 * This reads like a political pamphlet.


 * It is estimated that by requiring voters to present a government issued photo ID at the polls, over 25,000 transgender people in these states will face substantial barriers and be disenfranchised from voting in the November 2012 election.
 * How did the author predict a transgender will face discrimination? This is a concern borne from ideology.


 * Incarceration rates are relatively high within the transgender community, which prohibits many transgender individuals from voting. 
 * This high rate of transgender incarceration greatly disenfranchises the community, as that means approximately 16% of transgender people had lost their voting right at some point in their lives.
 * This is a short polemic implying unfairness in voting laws due to disproportionate affect. Such opinions are for other articles.
 * This is a short polemic implying unfairness in voting laws due to disproportionate affect. Such opinions are for other articles.


 * 08:38, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Then rather than tag it, why don't we simply delete the uncited material? Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 19:50, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Deletions and explanation
I just removed from the article a lot of material that was unsupported or entirely uncited. The problem in the first instance is greater: it was just information that had been collected and placed in the article. No attempt had been made to actually explain how those things added up to transgender disenfranchisement. There is far more of this material in the article now. Before I get my shears out again, I just want to provide fair warning: any material that is unsupported is liable to be deleted. That could make the article something of a stub, but at least it will be a solid stub. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 20:03, 2 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, please shear Cleopatran Apocalypse. If others are interested in the old version they can review the old versions.
 * 07:36, 5 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid there is much more to it. I'm concerned that actually taking a critical eye to the content on the page would require more deletions. I will need to do some independent research to add more information, I suppose. The problem so far is that a lot of the information on the page does not have a stated or clearly expressed connection to the topic - it's just... There. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 03:06, 7 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I'll add a second "shear away!" Your concerns with this article are reasonable, and you've given plenty of time and notice to anyone who wishes to step up and substantiate the uncited claims or rewrite the unencyclopediac portions of this article. Even if you pare it down to a stub, I don't think you have an obligation to replace the information you remove; our policy is explicit that "[t]he burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material . . . .", that "[a]ny material that needs a source but does not have one may be removed," that "Wikipedia is not a soapbox," and "[i]nformation should not be included in this encyclopedia solely because it is true or useful."
 * Again, thank you!
 * —  Rebbing    talk   17:52, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Citations still need a bit of work
Hey all,

I tried to clean up the citations, but it's a bit jarring of a task. This article could use a bit more contributions to source material to refer people to (editors and readers alike). Also, my apologies in advance for the multiple edits, it happened that way because I would take another look after I submitted the edit and find I missed something else.

Also, props to everyone who's contributed so far! You've done a mighty good job!!

Goldguy81 (talk) 22:54, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Unpacking the lead
I would like to see much more substantiation for the information in the lead.

Let's focus on the last sentence:

They may also be unable to obtain IDs if they are homeless, as a disproportionate number of transgender people are due to discrimination in housing and employment.

I cannot find that statement supported in either of the sources that are provided.

There is information about homelessness (2% of transgender people report being homeless, which is double the rate for cis??), there is some info on identity:

''Of those who have transitioned gender, only one-fifth (21%) have been able to update all of their IDs and records with their new gender. One-third (33%) of those who had transitioned had updated none of their IDs/records. • Only 59% reported updating the gender on their driver’s license/state ID, meaning 41% live without ID that matches their gender identity. • Forty percent (40%) of those who presented ID (when it was required in the ordinary course of life) that did not match their gender identity/expression reported being harassed, 3% reported being attacked or assaulted, and 15% reported being asked to leave.''

But this doesn't really substantiate the above.

Thoughts???Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 19:58, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

No one dissents? Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 16:52, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Garbled sentence
Moving this sentence here out of the lead, until someone can make sense out of what was meant, repair it, and possibly move it back:"They may also be unable to obtain government-issued identification if they are homeless, as a disproportionately greater number of transgender people are due to discrimination in housing and employment."

Huh what? Mathglot (talk) 00:25, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Don't see anything at all wrong with the sentence. Cleopatran Apocalypse (talk) 04:31, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

This article doesn't even address its own topic
This article is supposedly tackling the issue of "Transgender disenfranchisement in the United States", which may very well be a real thing. You would never know that by reading this article, however, since it at best suggests a single study has speculated that trans voters might have voting trouble due to looking different in person than on their photo IDs. Instead, it seems to conflate changing one's gender on government documents with being able to vote and tackles the different issue of whether governments recognize one's gender identity. The article's lede sentence asserts "Transgender disenfranchisement is the prevention by bureaucratic, institutional and social barriers, of transgender individuals from voting or participating in other aspects of civic life" and yet the article fails to make a case that this even exists. The meandering discussions about "how to" change one's identity on documents probably belongs on a different article. If this isn't going to be fixed it should probably be redirected or merged with Transgender rights in the United States, since in its current state it is useless. -Indy beetle (talk) 18:40, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Policy Analysis - Summer Session23
— Assignment last updated by Jet J. Do (talk) 06:06, 19 August 2023 (UTC)