This is utterly bonkers. People, including MANY MANY people in politics, change names for all kinds of reasons, and you should be able to simply run for office with your legal name, that's one of many things you should be able to do with a legal name.
In addition to explicitly exempting married names (which, what the fuck?) I can come up with a lot of people I know of or have read about with name changes that I bet Ohio would not kick off the ballot, because they consider those reasons valid.
Seems like garden-variety transphobia to me. No one cares when cis people do something.
Seriously, like the whole reason most people do a legal name change (myself included) is so we don't have to keep using our former name.
Totally bonkers, the only problem should be running under a name that is *not* their legal name. It's not like she's hiding debt or a criminal p ast!
Rafael Cruz and Willard Romney would like a word ...
Legal name, common nickname, whatever. If that's what you go by, then that should be allowed on the ballot. But it is especially egregious and enraging that using a legal name would be disqualifying in these situations.
I wish I remember whether the ballot all those years ago read Bill Clinton or William, but on the other hand, there was never a reason to care.
I mean, wouldn’t it be forbidden to run with something that *wasn’t* your legal name?
Isn’t Nikki Haley’s legal first name not … Nikki? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikki_H...
I could see an argument that if voters are to know a candidate's full record, then they should have a right to know all of their prior legal names. But only if it's applied equitably. This is just discrimination.