Hate on the ballot: Transphobia and elections

Elections amplify the key challenges that trans people face every dayOriginally published on Global VoicesA trans visibility march in Washington, DC. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Elections amplify the key challenges that trans people face every day. In recent years, politicians in all regions of the world have weaponized transphobia to win votes and smear opponents. The mismatch between trans people’s appearance and identity documents exposes them to discrimination and harassment at the polls. Social hostility and exclusion cause some trans people to stay out of political life and avoid voting altogether. In this article, global LGBTIQ+ advocacy group Outright International rounds up recent examples of barriers trans people face in elections and charts recommendations to advance full participation in democracy.  Weaponizing transphobia In the “super election year” of 2024, hate toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) people was on the ballot in around 85 percent of countries that held elections. Outright’s “Queering Democracy,” the most comprehensive global report on queer people’s participation in elections, found that politicians engaged in anti-LGBTIQ+ campaigning in 51 of the 61 jurisdictions examined in the report.   VoteLGBT campaign in Brazil encouraging people to vote for LGBTIQ candidates, São Paulo Pride 2024. Credit: Fernando Galacine. For example, in Ghana, the presidential election became “a competition of who was the most homophobic,” with the top contenders outdoing each other’s commitment to enacting a law that would criminalize simply being trans, queer, or an ally. In the U.S., the Republican Party spent over USD 215 million on anti-trans television ads, fabricating fear around trans people’s access to healthcare and public facilities, even when these issues were not voters’ priorities.  In at least 25 countries in 2024, candidates used buzzwords like “gender ideology,” “indoctrination,” or “wokism” to demonize equal rights for sexual and gender minorities people, especially trans people. In North Macedonia, the far-right VMRO-DPMNE party won a majority in parliament after running a campaign falsely portraying comprehensive sexuality education as “gender ideology” and “indoctrination.”  In 2026, around 55 countries are sending their citizens to the ballot box. While researching electoral developments for a follow-up report to “Queering Democracy” (to be released in early 2027), we came across more examples of political transphobia and gender panic, demonstrating a recurrent pattern: For example, in Colombia, far-right president-elect Abelardo de la Espriella railed against “gender ideology” throughout the campaign. During the launch of his presidential bid, he declared that he does “not accept that our children be conditioned, contaminated with gender ideology to try to change their view of sexuality.” Ahead of the state election in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, in September, the far-right party AfD unveiled its most extremist platform yet, vowing to eradicate “gender ideology” and the “rainbow doctrine” by abolishing gender studies programs, gender quotas, gender-responsive budgeting, and comprehensive sexuality education, among others. AfD is currently leading the polls with a wide margin. Ahead of the U.S. midterm general election in November 2026, Republican Party members are putting anti-trans measures on the ballot in at least four states, targeting gender-affirming care and trans participation in sports. In Hungary, bigotry lost at the ballot box this year. Voters came out in record numbers to boot out Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ten months after the historic 2025 Budapest Pride march, the country’s largest demonstration to date. While the queerphobia of Orbán’s Fidesz party was relatively toned down compared to previous elections, it remained core to their values as the party that railroaded a law that effectively banned Pride in 2025. Before the April 2026 election, U.S. Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary to rally support for Orbán, advancing the false claim that a loss for Orbàn would “condemn children to mutilization [sic] and sterilization in the name of gender care.” Attacks against trans candidates  For the few trans people who have managed to break the proverbial glass ceiling and have made it to the ballot, elections can be a violent affair. While all candidates are vulnerable to attacks regardless of their gender, trans candidates confront extreme levels of hostility linked to their identities, striking them at the very core of who they are. They face heightened risks as opponents exploit social norms that police diverse gender identities and expressions: In Pakistan, an assailant affiliated with the Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami physically attacked a 2024 trans candidate and her team, while her campaign volunteers faced regular verbal harassment. In Colombia, all six openly trans and nonbinary candidates identified in 2026 reported “misgendering, mockery, and online discrimination,” according to a civil society monitoring report. In Brazil, hate became fatal: A 2024 local trans candidate was found decapitated a month after the election. In this election cycle, trans candidates were on the receiving end of intense online attacks, with queer group VoteLGBT identifying over 3,000 transphobic comments against one local trans candidate alone. Candidates can also suffer from transphobia even when they are not trans, with politicians using regressive ideas around gender to undermine opponents. For example, in the U.S., as part of a broader smear campaign, a White House advisor falsely claimed that the Democratic candidate in the Senate race in Texas is “clearly transitioning into a female” and is the party’s “first transgender Senate candidate.”  Political opponents of French President Emmanuel Macron began propagating rumors that his wife, Brigitte Macron, was trans in the lead-up to the 2022 reelection campaign, building on a malicious rumor about the president’s sexuality that was first circulated during his 2016 presidential bid. In Canada, a few days after the 2025 elections, far-right media targeted Prime Minister Mark Carney’s adult nonbinary child and portrayed Carney as an irresponsible father for allowing his child to transition. Disenfranchisement Only 18 countries allow trans people to update their gender marker on official documents on the basis of self-determination. About 42 others allow gender marker changes in some circumstances but impose obstacles such as medical restrictions and bureaucratic red tape. Most countries do not allow trans people to change their legal gender markers on identity documents at all. When appearance and legal documents mismatch, trans people can be exposed to discrimination in polling stations: In Bangladesh, a trans-led organization, Inclusive Bangladesh, told Outright that in 2026, poll workers turned away some trans people who had not changed their gender markers due to the mismatch between their appearance and their documents or informed them that their votes had already been cast. While Bangladesh recognizes a “third gender” category, known as hijra, implementation is uneven and restrictive. In Indonesia, queer people interviewed by Outright in 2024 said that polling staff initially refused to allow some trans people to vote due to the mismatch between their appearance and their legal name and gender marker. Even in countries with a robust nondiscrimination policy framework in place, full electoral rights are not guaranteed: In Colombia, while the National Electoral Council (CNE) has issued an official protocol explicitly stating that a mismatch between a person’s physical appearance and their ID cannot be used to deny them the right to vote, cases of discrimination persisted in the 2026 elections. Electoral observers documented cases of polling officials subjecting trans voters to misgendering, “disrespectful comments or treatment,” and illegal demands for “extra proof” to validate their identity. In Spain, one of the 18 countries that offer legal gender recognition based on self-determination, a trans man who attempted to vote in the 2024 European Parliament elections reported that he was accused of committing fraud and was denied the right to vote. Trans people also faced voter intimidation in Bangladesh in 2026. According to Inclusive Bangladesh, local politicians campaigning for candidates of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami told some trans people in at least six districts not to vote, saying that their votes were “not needed” or would be cast on their behalf.  Gendered electoral practices that are not directly discriminatory may also have a negative impact on trans people’s ability to vote. In Bhutan, for example, polling queues and booths are segregated by sex, which could be problematic for trans and nonbinary individuals. A certification from a psychiatrist is required to change legal gender markers. During the 2023-2024 National Assembly elections, trans people who had not yet changed their gender marker had to join the queue based on their sex assigned at birth. This situation puts trans people in a bind: voting can expose them to harm, while abstention robs them of the opportunity to participate in a democratic exercise and fully contribute to the body politic. In countries where legal gender recognition is not possible, such as Botswana, Bulgaria, and Hungary, activists told Outright in 2024 that some trans people avoided voting in 2024 out of fear of discrimination or due to previous negative experiences around misgendering and harassment. Queering democracy Despite these barriers, many trans people continue to believe in the promise of democracy and are among the first to defend its value through and beyond the ballot box. This year, India and Nepal elected their first openly trans lawmakers, at a time when anti-trans actors are making progress toward reversing or undermining hard-won rights. In Uganda, where a draconian Anti-Homosexuality Act classified “aggravated homosexuality” as a capital crime in 2024, LGBTIQ+ advocates organized informal voter education, community discussions, and training for trans youth on electoral safety leading up to the 2026 general election. In Thailand, legal gender recognition made its way to the 2026 campaign platform of the People’s Party, the country’s largest opposition party, due to queer movements’ tireless advocacy, showing incremental progress a year after marriage equality became law in the country. Trans people are full and equal citizens, not fair game as targets to win votes. Our democracies are stronger when everyone, regardless of their gender, can fully participate and assert their place in the body politic.  If you have information on LGBTIQ people’s participation and queer-related campaigning in elections in 2026, please reach out to Venus Aves at vaves@outright.org. We are currently drafting our global report on the 2026 elections, to be released in early 2027. Written by Outright International, Venus Aves