We’ve heard a symphony of name change voter woes over the years. As you know, many women in the United States opt to change their names after marriage. The ideal scenario is to change your name right after your wedding on every identification document you have, down to your gym membership card. While this is the ideal, it rarely happens.
Day-to-day newlywed life and its balance of work, love, friends, family, etc leaves little room for standing in long office lines until you’re an official Mrs. Until recently, there weren’t too many consequences to partially changing your name, but times they are a changing.
One of the new possible consequences of halfway changing your name: not being able to vote. I just read an article in the Columbia Daily Tribune and the author is very concerned about a mandate regulating what forms of ID are considered acceptable proof of citizenship before you can cast a ballot. The mandate in Missouri would require any person who wanted to vote to show a valid driver’s license or U.S. passport in their legal name.
That can be a bit sticky for a woman who changed her name with Social Security, but not on her driver’s license and/or passport. Should the mandate pass, there will probably be a mad dash to the DMV to make the necessary updates, or scads of ladies turned away on election day due to mismatches.
The moral of the story is, if you change your name after marriage be sure to do it completely! Using a name change service like MissNowMrs can streamline the process and save you hours of time and costly future headaches.
What do you think of the Missouri Photo ID mandate? Is the state you’re living in considering something similar?