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Vanessa Joy, a trans woman, was disqualified as a candidate for the state legislature because she didn't know of the prior name requirement.
Ohio’s Secretary of State Frank LaRose has changed the state’s candidate declaration forms to help prevent a repeat of earlier this year when a trans candidate was disqualified after failing to list her deadname.
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Vanessa Joy, a transgender woman, was disqualified from running as a Democrat to represent House District 50 in Stark County in January after she failed to include on her signature petition forms any names she legally used within the prior five years.
While Joy was upset about the forced outing of her deadname, she was more upset that she was not informed of the requirement at the time she submitted her petitions.
“Something that is that important should have been on the instructions,” Joy told the local ABC affiliate WEWS in January. “It should have been on the petition.”
“The new form does that, and it’s now available on our website for potential candidates to use if they decide to file a candidacy in 2025,” Dan Lusheck, a LaRose spokesperson, told Cleveland.com.
LaRose’s office has enlarged the space provided for a candidate’s name along with the instruction to “include all prior names used in the past 5 years” except those resulting from marriage.
Related: 14 transgender elected officials you should know
Republicans were also impacted by the prior name requirement and sought to pass legislation before the holiday recess. Candidates would still be required to list any name changes within the last five years under the proposed legislation. However, the bill mandates “a space provided for the purpose” on the official declaration of candidacy form, much as LaRose has already accomplished.
The bill ultimately failed to pass before the holiday break.
Joy said in an interview that while she was encouraged others would not be unfairly disqualified by the prior name requirement, she was moving out of state with no plans of running for office.
“I’m not going to have to worry about it anymore,” Joy said.
