Recently election reformers have focused a great deal of attention on the real potential for a rollback in voting rights with the flurry of highly restrictive photo ID laws moving across state legislatures. Adding to an already layered system, there have been serious restrictions tacked on the franchise in states like Georgia and Indiana, while Wisconsin’s Governor Doyle keeps the disastrous effects of a five-time proposed photo ID bill at bay with his veto pen.

Let’s hope he has enough ink.

Rather than protecting eligible voters, it is estimated that photo ID requirements at the polls will cost millions their vote, most of them elderly, people of color, low-income, or recently relocated.

After the passage of the REAL ID Act — a dangerous add-on to a military spending bill in 2005 — the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform recommended using REAL ID for voter identification at the polls. Election reformers and civil rights advocates responded with a swift outcry. They did so again last spring, when Senator Mitch McConnell tried to attach a REAL ID requirement for voters to the immigration bill. The challenge continues as photo ID bills sweep state legislatures, and as states move to implement REAL ID legislation by 2008. Hurricane survivors, African Americans, Latinos, grandmas and grandpas, young people — you might have to kiss even more of your rights goodbye. That should scare you.

But there is a group of people left out of this debate (and marginalized in so many others) which will feel the impact of restrictive voter ID requirements, and REAL ID, intensely: the transgender community. Obtaining identification that properly reflects one’s gender identity has long been a critical, significant challenge for transgender and gender-non-conforming people. It’s a challenge that is often compounded by prejudice, discrimination by race or national origin and, frequently, dire economic hardship.

In fact, the financial burden of acquiring identification that accurately reflects one’s gender can be insurmountable. So, for transgender people, the REAL ID Act reads immediately as an onerous piece of legislation. Internationally, the Act places further barriers on people seeking asylum, providing asylum officers broad discretion in requesting that “the applicant should provide evidence which corroborates otherwise credible testimony”— including proof of persecution and additional proof of identification from those in their home country. Focusing domestically, REAL ID imposes regulations on the design, issuance, and management of state driver’s licenses, which, for all practical purposes, turn your driver’s license into a national identity card.

States will be required to make electronic copies of all documents available in a national database to an undefined group of people, including law enforcement officials, for at least 10 years. While the legislation is written so that states can opt out, the federally approved ID card will eventually be required for air travel, to open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, receive Medicaid, or take advantage of nearly any government service.

Of particular importance to transgender people is the fact that the process of changing sex designation on birth certificates, driver’s licenses, or social security cards currently varies from state to state, and state agency to state agency. In most states, unlike the Social Security Administration, which requires proof of “genital surgery” in order to change sex designation on social security cards, the Department of Motor Vehicles requirement is to obtain a doctor’s letter. These varying requirements have provided opportunities for many transgender people to change their gender on their DMV identification, so that they can work and go to school with identification that reflects their gender identity. However, since many transgender people have not had “genital surgery” — whether due to exorbitant costs, medical ineligibility, or simple preference — they cannot change their SSA sex designation.

Given this inconsistency, it is easy to see that cross-checking DMV and SSA databases will result in significant problems for transgender people, as has already been documented in a number of states, including New York, Maryland, and Missouri. As thousands of immigrants in New York began receiving letters challenging their license status, hundreds of transgender people started receiving letters as well due to the disparity in legal understanding and codification of sex designation between the two databases. Not long after the REAL ID Act passed in 2005, the DMV in Missouri sent out letters to transgender people who had already successfully changed the sex designation on their driver’s licenses, stating that they would have to return with additional medical evidence or their licenses would be suspended in 30 days.

REAL ID’s implementation will result in an even graver consequence for transgender people in storing information in a shared computer database, as required by the legislation. Ultimately, this system will result in outing thousands of transgender people to employers — or potential employers — an action which can have devastating consequences, given that very few states have anti-discrimination policies that include transgender people.

Of course, all this has implications for voting as well. In Georgia, Indiana, and Missouri, only a state-issued photo ID is acceptable at the polling place. Compounded by the fact that an estimated 30 percent of all transgender people have been in prison — including a disproportionate number of transgender women of color — and the impact of draconian felon disfranchisement laws, transgender people will continue to face numerous barriers to participating in our democracy.

There is real danger in REAL ID. The far-reaching impact of this legislation is chilling, to say the least. It has created an important bridge — between communities of immigrant groups, civil rights groups, LGBT groups, and anti-poverty groups — and it has sparked an insurgent wake-up call to create an even wider movement to challenge the pervasive and continual government-imposed criminalization of the lives and bodies of the many.