Troy Headrick, a representative in the Vermont House, has proposed H.351 An act relating to operator’s licenses, privilege cards, and nondriver identification cards.
https://legislature.vermont.gov/bill/status/2026/H.351
One of the provisions is
(a) It is the intent of the General Assembly that:
(1) individuals be able to obtain an operator’s license, privilege card, or nondriver identification that accurately reflects the individual’s full, legal name, including individuals with multiple first or last names, or whose names contain special characters; and
The problem I have is that, like every state I know of, there is no single law that says what a person’s name is.
* The law about birth registration says some stuff, but that’s only for people born in the state since the law was passed.
* The DMV has policies about names, but those are secret.
* There are laws and court decisions about how a person’s name should be written on a deed in the land records so that everyone will be on notice of the property transaction.
* There are laws about how one can change one’s name.
I think it’s wrong to give the DMV more authority over names using the secret procedures buried in their computer programs. Write a law about names that everyone can see. Put it in a more general-purpose part of the law, such as “Title 1: General Provisions”. Force the DMV to follow it. |
