The 2016 Presidential Election seems to throw something new at us every day. This time, it’s a call from some Donald Trump supporters to repeal the 19th amendment, which would take away women’s right to vote. But how serious is this call?
According to Snopes, it started when celebrity statistician Nate Silver tweeted out two charts that showed what the election results would look like if only women voted versus if only men voted. The results were complete opposites. If only women voted in the election, Hillary Clinton would win by a landslide. If only men voted, Trump would win by quite a bit (although not quite as much).
The United States of Women vs. The United States of Menhttps://t.co/F455bP3D8I pic.twitter.com/qjr6zLh640
— 538 politics (@538politics) October 12, 2016
Snopes cited three tweets that have turned up in the news quite a bit since, pointing to them as the possible origins of the so-called movement:
@emmaroller men should never have given women the right to vote #RepealThe19th
— Haunted Holly ✝️ (@HollyAnswers) October 11, 2016
I would be willing to give up my right to vote to make this happen #repealthe19th https://t.co/vndQu9dKFP
— CT Christian 4 Trump (@TracyOgrodnik) October 12, 2016
#repealthe19th I would gladly waive my right to vote to solidify the win! #TrumpPence2016 #NeverHillary pic.twitter.com/Qte9r4ye2y
— Lilo313 (@London313) October 12, 2016
Is this a legitimate concern? Should women be worried about losing their right to vote?
No. The election is less than a month away. Trump supporters are not going to go on some accelerated campaign to repeal the 19th amendment before November 8. Even if they tried, it would never work.
Ok, but is this all a joke?
Well, not entirely. The tweets might seem like they’re satire or like they’re just people who are trying to get a rise out of their followers, but this is where we have to look at the context clues and go beyond that first tweet. If it’s just a joke, there wouldn’t be a strong defense. While there are people (many, many people) who are tweeting it as satire and who aren’t serious with it, there are, sadly, many others who appear to be serious, including women who do provide a strong defense of why they would abandon the rights earned through the suffragettes’ hard work a century ago. Trump aside, they don’t acknowledge that giving up their right to vote in order to elect him (which, again, is not something that will happen and was never even a consideration prior to Silver’s tweet), they would also lose their voice when it comes to other things they care about and want to have a say in.
Others have pointed out that there is also some flawed logic in this “movement” — particularly with the group who identify as “Women Who Vote Trump.”
Some #WomenWhoVoteTrump are the same women who tweeted #RepealThe19th to ban women from voting so Trump can win. So there"s that
— Michelle (@Michelle9647) October 14, 2016
So again, is this serious?
There are people who are serious about it. There are women who enjoy freedoms that they apparently don’t recognize when they don’t think about the implications of giving up their right to vote just so Trump will win this election. There are certainly men who don’t believe women are smart enough to vote. To that end, there are women who don’t believe women are smart enough to vote.
But most of this hashtag isn’t serious. In fact, most of it is criticism against those who do hold such views that women shouldn’t vote, which, thankfully, seems to be a small group — a vast minority, no matter how they see themselves. The number of people criticizing the view far exceeds the number of people serious about giving up their right to vote to elect Donald Trump.
Source: B2C
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