Why is there a "gender" field in Elections Canada's voter registration?

You can use Elections Canada's Voter Registration Service to see if you're registered to vote.

You enter your name, date of birth, gender and address, and it tells you if there's an entry on the voters list that matches those criteria.

My question: why is gender one of the criteria?

It's obvious why they ask for your name.

Your address is relevant because it confirms the riding you're eligible to vote in and the poll you should vote at.

Date of birth confirms that you're old enough to vote.  It can also help distinguish you from other people at the same address who share the same name (given that it's not uncommon for parents and children to live together and that it's not uncommon for children to be named after their parents). Also, historically (with the existence of the phone book) it's been fairly simple to find out a person's address, but less easy (or, at least, requiring some degree of acquaintanceship) to find out their date of birth.  Added to that, date of birth is a data point that doesn't change. You can change your name, you can change your address, you can change the gender marker that appears on your ID and personal records, but your date of birth stays the same.

But gender doesn't add much to proving or confirming someone's identity.

Because so many given names are most commonly associated with one gender, it's not terribly likely that the gender marker would help differentiate you from other people with the same name. It can happen that people with different genders have the exact same name, but it's not nearly as robust a factor as address or date of birth.

And, because so many given names are gendered, it's not a workable factor for authenticating your identity either. A malicious actor (or a bot programmed with data scraped from baby name sites) would probably be able to guess the gender of the majority of people on the voters list.


On top of the fact that using gender as an identity factor adds little to no value, it also creates a situation where any negative impact is felt strictly by the most marginalized demographic.

People who continue to use the gender they were assigned at birth will have no problems whatsoever with choosing the same gender as appears on the voters list, or with having their gender as it appears on the list match the gender that appears on their ID.

But people whose gender marker on their official documentation has changed may find that their previous gender marker is still on the voters list, which would mean the online system says they're not registered to vote when in fact they are.  Or it could cause problem at the polling station, when the gender indicated on the list doesn't match the gender indicated on their ID, or the poll worker's perception of the voter's external appearance.

At a minimum, the presence of a "gender" field on the voters list creates the possibility of extra red tape for transgender voters, non-binary voters, and any other voters whose gender marker has changed at some point in their lives. Worst case, it could prevent these populations from being able to vote.

But it would have no possible impact on people whose gender identity and gender marker align with what they were assigned at birth.

Since we still live in a world where non-cis people are all too often marginalized, this means any negative impacts of having a "gender" field land squarely on the marginalized group.


Elections Canada does deserve credit for introducing a "Gender X" option on the voters list.  But I do encourage them to look critically at whether they need to be including gender at all. Does it actually add any value? And is that value worth the burden that it places squarely on the marginalized group?