"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.

YANBU

That’s embarrassing and sad , we must all do better. None of the women in my family or social circle vote just according to what their husbands or male relatives tell them.my 80 year old Aunty who is widowed (and lives in another country) actually voted for another party when she had the opportunity to vote for her brother who was running for another party 😂she said he has his party and I have mine!

I’ve never heard of anyone doing that, but I did grow up in a working class town with a lot of people blatantly casting votes based on who their dad voted so maybe that’s linked. perhaps they saw their mums follow their Dad ?

That said, I don’t get the impression they felt they had to vote for their fathers party, it was just more they didn’t bother to look into alternatives and thought of it as a family tradition rather than they were being openly told they had to vote for X party.

Still a bit sad though that they didn’t take some time to consider the parties/candidates.

From the age of 16 I was itching to vote to oust the Labour candidate in my town who was useless. There was a GE a week or so after my 18th birthday so I was able to vote.

I got my wish and the candidate I voted for replaced the Labour one (and no I didn’t vote for tories!) it’s sad how so many adults aren’t Switched on at all with politics. I’ve been interested in it since primary school.

I thought you'd transposed the year and it should have been 1917. Bloody hell, it was 1971 before women could vote!

I have voted what my DH said, not because he was controlling or told me too. But because I was stuck between two and I honestly couldn’t decide. We then talked through options and he said maybe go with x so I did. My DH is more into politics (watches politics tv on his lunch break 😂) so I value his opinion. But it has never been in a controlling way.

I know people who do this, re husbands and parents.. I genuinely don't get it, they're really smart, intelligent people, just not interested in politics, which tbf i also dont get. But we're all different i guess. And tbh, I'd probably still rather them , and everyone vote than not.

My grandma is exactly like this (72), she has always voted conservative as that's what my grandad told her to do.

My jaw also dropped when I found this out😅. She doesn't really understand/care for politics much, so I don't berate her. My grandad is very much into politics though, and loves talking about it with me. My mum is fiercely independent and votes for who she chooses (labour), as much as my SD tries to make her vote Tory lol.

Indeed, Turkeys voting for Christmas. It is such a sad reality, that in the UK and currently in France, those voting against immigration and immigrants are secondos and thirdos, of immigrant heritage.

The Head of the (ridiculously called) Rassemblement National, ex National Front, has Italian immigrants as parents. The RN and form NF in France is full of ex Italians, Spanish and Portuguese, etc- who feel vastly superior to those from ex French colonies in North Africa, and highly Islamophobic and previously Antisemitic too.

I probably am influenced by him to a certain extent, and vice versa, and we do share similar views so I'd be very surprised if our votes were wildly different - that said we voted differently to each other today - we were both unsure between two and in the end both went opposite directions (neither was for the party who I suspect will win - we are in a very safe seat, nor for the opposition)

I don't have contempt for people who don't understand politics.
But I feel everyone should have a grasp on the type of society they want to live in. Whether they believe in a good national health service , whether they think private schools are a good idea, whether the environment is important to them etc.
And you don't have to understand politics in depth to get a broad feel of what each political party stands for.
So it's possible to vote without having an in depth knowledge.
What annoys me are the people who think politics is "nothing to do with them". Politics affects every aspect of their everyday life.

This was one of the central arguments against women's suffrage - married men get 2 votes!

It's not shocking though, in particular for older women.
The right for women to vote is only a bit more than 100 years old, so if you are, say, 80 you were born into a time when it was still quite a novelty. That was after centuries of women not being allowed to. So having to rely on the men folk to give them a voice is all part of society really getting into what women's suffrage actually allows.
I'd rather be proud that I'm part of something more recent, which is women having top jobs, owning homes (my mum wasn't even allowed a mortgage in her own name as a woman when I was born!) , citing divorce for their own stated reasons, having rights enshrined in law, dressing as they wish, just thinking for themselves.
It absolutely doesn't surprise me that some older women rely on their husband's political thoughts, and I don't care anyway, because they are paving the way for their daughters to know better.

DH sometimes asks my opinion on how to cast his vote as we live somewhere where tactical voting is frequently important and as we have very similar opinions about things but he knows that I follow politics much more closely than he does, he trusts my opinion of when it might be helpful to vote tactically. I've never told him how to vote, though, just told him what I am doing and why and then he makes his own mind up!

Another problem with postal voting is that the deadline is earlier leaving less time for challengers to campaign and meaning postal voters can't take into account things that happen later in the campaign.

never met anyone like this ....

My mum used t do this for my disabled sibling. When she died I put it in the bin. The only way they could vote would have been with my interference and that just wasn’t going to happen.

How can anyone not be 'interested in politics'? Education, NHS, social care, transport and roads, environment, energy supply, water treatment, our armed forces and security- the list goes on and on. How can anyone not be interested in any of them?

I've had those conversations in the past. What do you think of xyz Jane? Reply- oh John says that.... Ask again, what about you, how do you feel about it? Well, John thinks ... And quietly, calmly asked again 'but what about you, Jane, what is YOUR opinion? Reply, oh me, I don't think about such things, John says ...

Just mind boggling. I am so proud that my mum was always politically aware and taught us to think for ourselves and be vocal about issues, and active too. And she was born in 1918. She and my dad often disagreed about many political issues, and the debates were really interesting in our family.

I think it is UR - but I suspect there are 100's of votes cast by people 'doing what their parents or partners said' or 'not really understanding politics' .. or 'voting against the grain..

I am sat here - knowing who I want won't win a seat - and whether not voting tactically will mean who I really don't want = will get in.

I honestly think the system needs to change - we should 'vote for who we like' then it should come down to 'a' or 'b' ..

OR the votes should all be added up and if 1/3 of people voted for X then 1/3 of seats in parliament go to X..

The current system really is unfair on so many levels.

I have a friend who 'doesn't know how she votes because DH fills in my ballot. I just sign it'.

Jaw meet floor

Obviously I think everyone should vote independently etc, however....

Voting, in and of itself, is choosing someone to decide things on your behalf, in the hope and expectation that they do so to the best of their ability.

I trust my husband to act in my interests more so than any politician.

He regularly consults me on my specialist area of skills. He has a politics degree. I'd trust him to choose a party to vote for.

My parents disagreed about politics their entire married lives.

Dad was a staunch labour voter his entire life. He came from generational poverty, and only really came out of it fully with his parents generation.
Mum was (and still is) staunchly conservative. Her background is affluent middle class business owners.

Although they disagreed, and dad would talk about mum voting "the right way", she always stood her ground and voted however the hell she liked.

She and I are very much either end of the political spectrum, but I'm proud of her for standing up for herself and voting how SHE wants to vote.

Well given some of the scary threads on MN where women's partners / husbands control their finances, what they wear, who they can be friends with etc etc it's not really a great surprise if how a woman votes is also dictated to her.

I’d say it’s quite common. Although it baffles me that people don’t know who to vote for. If they don’t know who to vote for then they shouldn’t get a vote.

I remember being a juror on a murder trial and when we were doing final deliberations someone saying 'oooh it's just so complicated, can someone decide for me?'

There are a lot of dimwits out there.

Domestic abuse is rife, and I'm sure coercing your spouse to vote, is the tip of the iceberg.

My grandmother (dead for 30 years now) used to vote the opposite of my grandad but never told him.
My other grandmother used to get the conservatives to give her a lift to the polling station (this was in the 60s) and then vote Labour.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. If your point is the violence is much more important in the scheme of things then I totally agree with you.
I only meant that controlling a womans voting shouldn't be a surprise given all the other ways women are controlled.