To Quentin,
My husband and I have been married for more than 25 years. Our marriage is respectful, happy, and healthy most of the time. However, we don’t always agree on everything. Over the years, we’ve had lively and interesting conversations about both domestic and foreign government policy.
Our home has been tense during this election season. I think he will vote for Trump 99% of the time, but we haven’t talked about it yet. We won’t be able to go to the polls at the same time on Tuesday because of our plans. Should I tell him I’m voting for Harris, taking away his vote in effect, or should I do the opposite?
I’ve read a lot about this problem and would like to hear your thoughts.
Getting married in NJ
To Married People,
It’s not just your family that disagrees with each other over politics.
But from a political point of view, the risks are low for you. These are the seven states that experts say could go either way in the presidential election. You do not live in one of them. It was the Democrats in New Jersey in 2020, 2016, and the election before that. In fact, George H.W. Bush won New Jersey for the Republicans the last time, in 1988.
For me, the stakes may be higher. Why do you think you can’t tell him? What does that say about your marriage? That you can handle being sick, losing a family member, having a mortgage, being tired from working full-time, and, for many couples, the stress of growing a family and making ends meet, but you can’t handle talking about the 2024 election?
That brings up another, maybe even bigger question: What would happen if you told him? Would he argue, hoping that you would give in and vote Republican? Or would you like him to vote for the Democratic choice like you did? I know that this election will be split down the gender lines for some people, but not all of them.
What if he told you he voted for the “other” candidate? That’s just as important. Could you see that he wasn’t the man you married? Or would you tell yourself, “Yes, this is the man I married?” His ideas about X and Y are set in stone, and I have no plans to or desire to change them. Or would you say, “He’s changed, and so have I?”
Some couples vote for the same candidate, despite their political differences, in part due to one spouse’s lack of financial independence.
The answer to your question is easy, but the result might be hard to understand. You should only tell your husband who you’re voting for if (a) you want him to know, (b) you think he should know, (c) you think it will be helpful and worthwhile, or (d) you want it to lead to an important, if tough, and necessary talk.
I hope that you are not trying to get the other person to change their mind by having this talk. That doesn’t look good for your relationship when things get tough. If anyone of you racked up credit card debt or was about to, I hope you could bring it up without worrying about getting in trouble.
As a side note, you can vote however you want, no matter what other people say. To keep the process honest, the ballot is hidden. This way, Americans can vote without worrying about what their spouse, parents, children, friends, or even coworkers might say, think, or do. It’s true that in the U.S. you can lose your job because of your political ideas.
Things could be worse. There are couples who vote for the same individual, even though they disagree with politics. One reason they do that is because one person doesn’t have enough money to live on their own. She wrote on Salon.com that S.C. Beckner voted the way her husband wanted her to in 2016 and that she had left him several times only to come back because of “financial reasons.”
She says she’s not going to vote this time to make her husband happy. “I could still be a woman whose husband is an evangelical and who depends on him for money.” “I’m getting that done,” she wrote. “I’m not going to hide my vote.” Lack of speech is the same as taking part. To keep quiet is to keep denying that I am a smart, well-educated woman. I found my voice. “My vote is my voice.”
In the 2020 presidential election, women accounted for nearly 55% of the electorate and women outnumbered men in all of the swing states, except one.
Things could be a lot worse. Rebecca Solnit wrote in the Guardian that some homes are not republics but “dictatorships.” She said that a canvasser in Pennsylvania saw what he thought was forced control, where the husband did all the talking. She also mentioned a woman who refused to talk on the phone because her husband was in the car.
According to the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan public policy group in Washington, D.C., women made up more than half of voters in 2020 and will continue to do so as they get older. In the seven swing states, women votes outnumbered men, except in Wisconsin, where exit polls showed that the gender split was even.
I think that being able to have these kinds of talks shows how healthy your marriage is. Beckner said she was more “submissive” in the beginning of her marriage: “I took care of the kids, worked at least part-time when child care allowed, made homemade meals and baked goods, did all the laundry for our big family, and handled our money.”
Of course, you don’t have to talk about this, especially on voting day. A lot of families don’t talk about politics during the holidays or when people are worried about the outcome. But you should never have to hide something from your husband out of fear of what might happen next. Neither should he.
On November 6, no one should be afraid to speak out about politics.
