"I vote for who my husband tells me to"

[Applescruffel]

A few years ago, a family member shocked me by saying, yeah, I do vote but I don't know anything about it so I just vote for whoever DH says.

My jaw dropped. Honestly, WTAF?

I advised her to go on isidewith and answer the questions, see what it comes back with. I asked her a few days later if she had, and she said yes, it came back with X party. BUT THEN SHE SAID "but DH wants XX party so I'm going with them" Jaw hit the floor.

Anyway, I'm wondering how common it is. Have any of you ever voted for someone someone else told you to?

yabu - yes, I've voted as per someone else's instructions
yanbu - no, I've always voted according to what I want.

Not a British citizen and cheering for Reform.

wait until those leopards eat your face, lady!

lol

Forcing someone to vote for a particular party is a criminal offence. I can imagine it might be difficult to prove though !!

I think there's a big difference between a) asking for advice on voting from someone you trust and who shares your values and b) being told who to vote for.

My maternal grandmother was definitely in the former camp. She was absolutely not someone who would take orders from other people and my grandad wasn't someone who told his wife what do. But she wasn't at all interested in politics and the only part of the newspaper she ever looked at was the crossword, and rather than spend ages trying to get up to speed on party policies etc she basically just used to ask my grandad who he was voting for and why, and would then invariably vote the same way because she trusted him to have a choice that reflected the values they shared.

However, one of our neighbours when I was a kid told my mum "I'd probably vote Labour if it was down to me, but DH makes us all vote Tory in our house". My mum pointed out that he wouldn't see her ballot paper and she could vote Labour if she wanted and her friend said 'Ooh no, I couldn't, DH wants us to be a Tory household'. This would have been early 1980s.

I'd like to assume this is a lot less common now than it was in the past, but you never know. An acquaintance of my sister's (a grown women in her 30s, married, with three kids) told my sister that she wanted to get the Covid jab but her dad would go mad because he didn't believe in it. My sister said 'You're a grown woman with a family! How would he even know?!' and her friend said 'But he might find out and then he'd go ballistic'. It wouldn't surprise me if that woman's father told her how to vote, even if her husband didn't.

Dh and I are pretty much on the same page and vote the same way. MIL isn’t allowed to have her own opinions though and does what FIL tells her.

Seconded! Posts like that make me feel that tickers on MN would not be a bad thing after all.

XH never voted. I don't think he was eligible (has indefinite leave to remain), but in any case he wouldn't have been interested. Probably just as well. We didn't have a laburnum either, unfortunately.

I have a friend in her 30s who says she 'doesn't understand voting' so her husband does both of their postal votes. She's a professional, educated woman.

It's depressing.

My DF canvassed in the Welsh valleys during the early 1950s. He told me most of the wives answering the door said they would vote how their husbands told them too. They certainly wouldn't have been voting Tory, Labour strongholds then as I think they still are

What's there to understand about voting? Could he not explain where to put her cross and send her some links?

I think this is pretty common with the older generation, older than 70 though.
I used to canvass and we used to get a lot of 'my late husband and I always did x'. Also, plenty of people who decades later still vote how their parents told them to.

I also think this is a big problem with postal voting. There's nothing to stop the person who pays the bills or the dominant personality from telling everyone else in the family how to vote.

Why do some people have so much contempt for people who don’t understand politics? I often say I’m not interested in politics. I’m not interested in it because I don’t understand it. I don’t imagine there are many people who understand it but are just completely apathetic.
My parents left school at twelve to work in factories. They lack basic education. It’s not that easy for them to just teach themselves all about politics. My own education was very limited. They didn’t teach us about politics in school. When I try to watch the news or read a newspaper, my brain just can’t make sense of most of it.
My dh has a very broad knowledge base about that sort of thing and enjoys keeping up with current affairs. His family are all well educated. He used to be surprised how little I understood about politics but he can understand why it’s difficult for me.

I have no idea how my late husband ever voted and he never knew how i voted. We did used to discuss politics and social issues and generally agreed but voting was one of the very very few things we kept private out of principle.

"I used to work with adults with learning difficulties ( perfectly capable of being told facts and making decisions though) and so many parents/ carers had told them they couldn't vote. I don't know how many genuinely thought that, or whether people were using proxy/postal votes to vote in their behalf."

On the other hand, I now live in a country where voting is compulsory so a colleague's son who is still learning his colours has to vote. There is a possibility of getting an exception for him, but she's not sure she has the moral right to do this as he might change his mind later.

🙄😒🤨

And that is why the focus should be on postal votes rather than ID at the Polling PLace.

But if your DH understands it, why can't he teach you? Why can't you ask anyone else to explain it to you? Buy a book? Read simple newspapers or a book for children.

I do agree that quality newspapers and broadcast media often assume a degree of understanding that many people don't have.

I would wager that this poster is able to "blend in", and not appear to be visibly "an immigrant", with that strange attitude.

Yanbu. It's very depressing to think people (well, mostly women) will be pressured to vote for who their husband tells them to vote for. Although it's not surprising unfortunately. I think my mum is in this camp.

That said, my husband has been asking who I'll vote for and I've so far said I haven't decided. I have, I decided labour weeks ago, and that's who I've voted for today. However, he will definitely have a problem with this. I'm still deciding whether to be honest or lie and say I voted Green. I want Labour to win, but he's staunchly conservative for the simple reason that he's a higher rate tax payer and thinks labour will tax him more. At the last election when I said I intended to vote labour, he had a strop and said "well, don't expect a holiday next year if you get what you want and they win!" As if my vote would decide the whole thing.

Its was my husbands Nans 101 birthday this weekend and I was explaining to DD that when Nanny was born women didn't have the right to vote (although obviously once she reached voting age it had changed)

She mentioned that her and her late husband never disclosed to each other how they voted and rarely discussed politics ... but at least she was allowed to vote for who she wanted I suppose 🤔

Well, it's a bit more than just putting a cross isn't it? You need to know what the different parties stand for, how to figure out when politicians are being misleading, how to evaluate information you can get from different sources, how to understand polling, etc.

Back in the sixties, our history teacher told us "Remember, women died so you could vote. Always use your vote, especially if you're cancelling out your husband's vote!!"

A friend was canvassing once and asked a young man how he voted. The answer: "I don't know, my dad fills it in".

I would never do this, but my MiL does. She openly asks every time: "So who are we voting for (FiL)?" I keep diplomatically silent whilst wanting to shout that women literally died so she could have a voice. Urgh. DH and I often discuss politics and although we broadly align I'm pretty sure we've voted differently today.

My dh has a huge interest in politics. He is able to dissect the different party policies in a fairly unbiased way. He leaves me to make up my own mind. Which I have. I agree with his leanings

"All campaigning material from our local MP has always been addressed to my husband alone - despite my being on the electoral roll, and having written to the MP personally."

I'm no fan of the Tories, but this will be some kind of targeting thing and not really to do with him being the man.

I'm flabbergasted that some women have their identity and decisions ruled by their husbands, scary stuff