"Let your husband vote in your place": Why are influencers in the US calling on women not to vote?

A new wave on social media and at conservative right-wing events in the US is calling on young women to abstain from voting or to hand their vote to their husband. Influencer Savannah Faye Stone called at a conference in San Antonio for a "family voting" model, and according to polls about 20.5% of the public supports the idea. Experts warn of harm to the right to vote and to public health.

A new wave in the public sphere and social media of the conservative American right is addressing young women with an unusual message: abstain from voting in elections, or transfer your vote to your husband. The phenomenon links neo-traditional lifestyle trends ("Trad Wives") with funded political campaigns, and according to the article it is raising concern among social activists, policy researchers and public health experts. At an event for young Christian women in San Antonio, Texas, 21-year-old influencer Savannah Faye Stone called for adopting a "family voting" model, under which a single ballot is deposited by the husband, because married partners are "one flesh and one political unit." Footage from the Turning Point USA women's leadership conference showed young participants declaring they would willingly give up their right to vote for a more conservative country. According to a report in Harper's Bazaar, social media algorithms reward provocative and emotionally charged content. Researcher Jess Brightvitz explains that posts opening with an innocent domestic lifestyle slide gradually into promoting messages against women's right to vote. At the same time, popular podcasts are launching series preaching female submission to male authority, and Pastor Doug Wilson, considered to have ties in Trump administration circles, has stated in interviews that the 19th Amendment to the Constitution should be abolished entirely. Recent polls show that about 20.5% of the American public is beginning to support the "family voting" idea. According to a report in The Smoking Chimney, the discourse has crossed from the margins into the heart of the Republican mainstream, and pastors and broadcasters are devoting panels to justifying denying women the right to vote. At the same time, administrative moves to reduce voting are reported in the US: purging voters from rolls, closing polling stations in low-income neighborhoods and tightening ID requirements. Psychiatrist Dr. Ruth Shim of the University of California, Davis explains that voting is a "social determinant of health," and that voter suppression acts as a destructive structural barrier.