‘Can my Husband Find out who I Voted for?’ – How Women Being Pressured by Men to Change their Vote in the US Presidential Election is a Common Experience

‘Can my husband find out who I voted for?’ This was the short question posed on X by New Jersey-based businesswoman Olivia Howell as summer was coming to a close.

Within hours the post unleashed an online “firestorm”, sparking serious concerns about the extent of coercive influence by women’s partners on their voting choices.

With the 2024 US presidential race entering the final straight and protection of women’s rights, including to abortion, on the ballot, Howell’s question hit a national nerve. Who women vote for in November’s election is likely to be pivotal for the results. In key swing states such as Wisconsin and Michigan, how women cast their ballots could be the deciding factor in who enters the White House.

Howell’s post, which attracted more than eight million views in 48 hours and prompted women to ask if their vote really was private, was part of a new campaign, Vote Without Fear. Launched in response to Howell’s own worries that women were being pressured to vote in line with their husbands’ views, the platform provides basic voting rights information, including on the right to privacy. It also has a telephone Hotline.

“What if there are a lot of women who want to vote for their future and they’re afraid?” Howell says of her motivation for co-founding the non-partisan platform along with her sister. “If you’d told me I was going to start a national voting conversation on my 2024 bingo card that was not on there.”

As well as providing practical advice about voting processes, the platform reassures women that their vote is not public domain and that it can’t be revealed, unless they choose to tell someone.

Howell had not expected the scale of the response, with celebrities with huge followings retweeting the original thread propelling it to millions of views. Women from across the US also got in touch to share stories about a form of voter suppression usually overlooked.

Some women relayed stories of men in households interfering with how wives and daughters voted. “My stepdad would get absentee ballots and basically tell my mom how to vote,” one person in the thread wrote.

Being pressured to vote one way “is a common experience women have had and we need to talk about it,” commented a woman with an abusive ex-husband. “I told the pollster I was voting for Trump because my husband was in the room,” another posted.

Poll workers and canvassers joined the conversation too, reporting a host of troubling reactions from men. Doors being slammed on volunteers or phones being yanked from women’s hands by angry husbands when canvassers called were typical examples. One canvasser in North Carolina recalled “women whispering into the phone” to avoid being heard.

A poll worker wrote: “I have had to deal with husbands and fathers who want to join their wives or daughters in the voting booth to ‘make sure they vote the right way.’”

Another aspect of the running Vote Without Fear has been “angry” men inserting themselves into the conversation. Some called for the repeal of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, Howell says. And, as is often the case with women putting their heads above the political parapet, she has met with online harassment.

The issue of spousal influence on women’s votes comes to the fore against a charged political backdrop for women’s rights and amid a knife-edge election (if polling is accurate).

The eradication of Roe v. Wade in 2022 by the Supreme Court ended the national right to abortion while, if victorious, Republicans are threatening to erode women’s rights further.

The unofficial Republican ‘roadmap’, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, boasts a litany of regressive proposals, including the further chipping away of reproductive rights. With a groundswell of women likely to vote “for their own future” in November, Howell argues that attention needs to be paid to those facing pressure to vote against their interests.

It’s not difficult to see why women’s votes matter so much in political calculus. In recent Presidential Elections, turnout among women has exceeded men. 

In 2020, 54.7% of people who voted were women. The gender gap is a key factor in the race this time around too, not least with the Democratic Party fielding a woman candidate. Add to this that both the Republican Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates have been repeatedly accused of misogyny (and in Trump’s case, much worse) heightened anxieties among many female voters might be expected.

The Vote Without Fear platform is positioned as non-partisan, but Howell says that from the profusion of feedback and comments received, the problem of pressuring women to vote in tandem with their husbands is very much a Republican/Trump male voter problem.

Howell makes no claims to be “reinventing” the wheel with Vote Without Fear but says that having readily available “accessible” voting rights information aggregated in a single place with an emphasis on the “safety of women first,” is needed in the current climate.

Beyond Vote Without Fear, women have been coming up with clever and resourceful ways to get the message out about voting rights as the election approaches.

Analogue methods have proven popular since contacting women via technology or social media could land some in trouble with partners. A guerilla ‘Post-It’ campaign has seen women use the adhesive coloured paper to leave encouraging messages reminding women that their vote is private.

The neon notes have popped up in a variety of public places including bathrooms, workplaces, campuses and even state fairs. The low-tech approach makes it easy for anyone to participate while offering a boost to worried women voters.

Women being pressured to vote by a coercive partner isn’t new. Many of those getting in touch with Vote Without Fear for example, including poll workers, related incidences of spousal interference during previous election cycles.

For those most likely to be at risk, victims of domestic violence, there is existing guidance on how to navigate coercive control during elections and vote safely.

The National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) provides Safe Voting Tips for survivors. These include practical advice such as scheduling voting when the abuser is busy to avoid the possibility of overlapping at a polling station.

With mail-in ballots increasingly popular (46% of voters reported using absentee or mail-in ballots in 2020), Howell cautions that whenever advice is given, the woman’s safety must be paramount. It may not always be possible to vote and stay safe when the paperwork is completed at home, she points out.

Since turnout and the issues driving it are likely to play a primary role in the outcome of the election, campaigners are keen to support women right up to the wire. With some recent polls showing Trump losing ground to Kamala Harris on the economy and among white women – a group without whose support Trump is likely to lose – the significance of every vote is clear.

For Howell, helping women of all stripes to not only to use their vote –  but to vote how they want – is vital. “We need to speak up. There are a lot of people who don’t want women to vote.”