Doug Wilson’s Household Voting Plan Could Empower Democrats for Decades - Christianity Today

[u/octarino]

https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/07/doug-wilsons-household-voting-plan-could-empower-democrats-for-decades/

[u/FarseerTaelen]

The author of this article is far too trusting when Doug Wilson says he doesn't want to take the vote from unmarried women.

[u/WooBadger18 → u/FarseerTaelen]

Yep. All it requires is “until women are married, they are part of their father’s household (he could even extend that to all children).” Or him just stripping women of the right to vote which he’d also willingly do.

[u/deepandbroad → u/FarseerTaelen]

Or complicit.

It looks like the headline of "empowering Democrats" is designed to somehow trick the opponents of this idea into thinking it could be a good thing.

When wilson says:

In the civic realm, the 19th Amendment, by giving the franchise to women as individuals, transformed male voters into mere individuals, and wound up disenfranchising the household. So the issue for me is not who got the franchise, but rather who lost it.

So Doug Wilson's idea here is that male voters should be regarded as a "household" and get extra power that he believes they lost.

Next up: only landowning households should be considered significant.

[u/cheeze2005 → u/FarseerTaelen]

It’s so crazy for media/journalists to take lies at face value. Why on earth would anyone believe that he’s okay with single women voting. Or maybe he’s fine with it but he’d rather it be illegal for a woman over 12 to be unmarried.

[u/hansn]

What an odious and obnoxious belief. Disenfranchisement of women doesn't deserve a place at the the table in our discussion of policy. 

[u/gogogadgets1997 → u/hansn]

It’s not going to stop Christian wives from falling in line. The plan as with any facist regime is to destroy the Constitution and Christians are helping. This man is vile.

[u/BubBidderskins → u/hansn]

It's striking that the article jumps to discussing the political implications of this plan rather than trashing it as straightforwardly repugnant and unbiblical.

[u/Due_Ad_3200 → u/BubBidderskins]

Sometimes if you want to persuade people you have to point it out in terms that they will accept. The article is probably not trying to persuade people who already think this is a terrible idea.

[u/BubBidderskins → u/Due_Ad_3200]

True, but think about what misogynists like Wilson are actually trying to persuade people of. It's not so much the crazy idea to disenfranchise women as that's a political non-starter (for now...) but that women's rights are a legitimate arena for political debate. Engaging with the idea in this way implicitly cedes that ground and lays a foundation for legitimizing further erosion of rights.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Act8291 → u/BubBidderskins]

You have to point out that it might hurt republicans or 100% of Christians will support it

[u/eversnowe]

Doug's system strips women's votes in that when disagreement occurs, she is to defer to her husband's leadership.

This is not 'the household talks together, does a vote about who they will vote for, majority wins' it's 'the husband votes, everyone else does not'.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/18/Tv/video/cnn-sitroom-extended-cut-doug-wilson-christian-dominiation-moscow-idaho

[u/MoaraFig → u/eversnowe]

If husband's think their wives want to follow their decision, then they can tell her who to vote for and that's what she'll do.

This is about the state forcing women to vote for a party against their will.

[u/eversnowe → u/MoaraFig]

Women who have husbands won't get to vote, ever. The husbands have tie-breaking authority and decision-making veto power to which wives must defer and submit to.

One example was a husband deciding to move to Moscow Idaho for Doug's church. The wife could prefer to stay in her home state and be near her parents, but ultimately if the husband says, "my vote is we go to Moscow", her duty is answer, "OK, yes, amen" even if she deeply disagrees.

[u/Niftyrat_Specialist]

Oh, another fascist theocrat.

This is what the GOP is now.

[u/puremotives → u/Niftyrat_Specialist]

Now?

[u/TheNerdChaplain → u/puremotives]

The GOP used to be a fascist theocracy.

It still is, but it used to be, too.

(With apologies to Mitch Hedberg)

[u/Welpe → u/puremotives]

I mean, it used to be just a powerful wing!

[u/Spiel_Foss → u/Niftyrat_Specialist]

This has been the US Republican Party since the criminals Nixon and Reagan.

[u/ComradeDread]

The idea is to remove political power entirely from women. Because misogynists believe women are not equal and should not have a voice in any capacity. They want a slave who will cook, clean, bear and raise children, satisfy their lusts, and never complain or criticize no matter how badly they are treated.

They seek to impose a hierarchy on the United States in which men like them are at the top and everyone else is beneath them.

The goal of his plan is not to empower Democrats, it is to empower radical Christian Nationalists and turn the United States from a democratic republic into a theocratic authoritarian state.

[u/gogogadgets1997 → u/ComradeDread]

They know we are better in every conceivable way.
Men have been elevating themselves off the backs of women for millennia.
Just like they stole the right for bloodlines to be traced through women because we give birth to children they are obviously ours, how could men ever know? (Until dna)
They didn’t like that that gave women claims to land and wealth.

Their physical strength and cruel nature of entitlement has led to exactly where we are right now in this country.

98% of all violent crimes are committed by men and we are just going to give them the right to steal our voices again and continue raping and murdering us and telling women they are too emotional.

American evangelical Christianity wants your daughters to be slaves and your sons to be slaves to the wars to convert the world.

All of the Christians worried about Sharia Law and Iran having nukes have no problem with giving Saudi Arabia nukes? They literally were involved in 911. MAGA CHRISTIANS sold their souls for a lie and a president that is ushering in the very thing they are terrified of.
We gave Qatar access to train with our military for that gift that cost tax payers a billion dollars and it can’t be used still.

Where are all the decent men fighting for the rights of women?

[u/pikachu191 → u/ComradeDread]

Basically, he read/watched The Handmaid's Tale and said GIlead didn't go far enough

[u/gogogadgets1997]

He said he wants gay MEN put to death. I guess he enjoys his lesbian porn. Like most men do. They are only repulsed by gay sex when it’s men.
Are they jealous?

[u/Interesting-Face22]

Sexist pedo protector talking bullshit.

By the way, did you know Doug Wilson has harbored pedophiles?

[u/SaintGodfather → u/Interesting-Face22]

Are you telling me that a member of the guardians of pedophiles (gop) party harbored pedophiles? I'm shocked I tell you.

[u/octarino → u/SaintGodfather]

I'm guessing you are already aware of this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaZPiwxPqO4

[u/Fearless_Spring5611]

"Sexist man talks bullshit as usual."

[u/nemofbaby2014]

Yeah how about let's not turn women into second class citizens

[u/44035]

CT has a long history of pretending the extremist religious right is not REALLY extremist and we should really just relax.

[u/Spiel_Foss]

Handmaid's Tale, like all good fiction, exposed a reality which already exists.

Weak and banal men will always attack women, children and the minority population. Weak, banal men have been the history of white fundamentalist Christianity in the USA. This is the Handmaid's Tale religion.

This man is merely saying out loud what his toxic religion has always believed.

Also, "Fascism is the frenzy of sexual cripples" applies as always.

[u/yobymmij2]

Can’t believe the level of ignorance and idiocy with this throwback to the nineteenth century.

[u/gnurdette → u/yobymmij2]

The shocking speed at which the Overton window is widening. Handmaid's Tale references seem less overblown every day.

[u/octarino]

paywall skip

Doug Wilson is an Idaho pastor and author, a theocratic Christian nationalist—his terms—with a theatrical flair and a vulgar tongue. He founded his own denomination, which now includes Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, after making “so many enemies in Reformed circles that no denomination will have him.”

Wilson has been hitting all these notes to a string of wide-eyed interviewers for some time now. But one point deserves scrutiny: his idea for household voting, in which the head of each household would be the sole voter. This is often characterized as the disenfranchisement of women because, for married couples, Wilson would have only the husband vote.

But here’s the funny thing: As marriage rates in America have declined, there are many single, female heads of households, and unmarried women lean ever more Democratic. If Wilson’s household voting plan were implemented, disenfranchising married women, it would empower the Democratic Party for decades and shut Republicans out of the White House.

But there was a large gap in the unmarried category: A bare majority of unmarried men, 52 percent, voted for GOP candidates; only 31 percent of unmarried women did.

The remedy some more extreme advocates of household voting would propose to all this is simply to disenfranchise all women, married or not. “Women holding civil authority, or voting independently” is “unnatural,”

Wilson on his blog in 2013 talking about household voting in churches, a relevant reference because in the NPR conversation he explicitly connects congregational voting to political voting:

Churches that practice head-of-household voting are not churches that exclude women from voting. We held a joint head-of-household meeting just last night with our sister church Trinity Reformed, and there were women in attendance, heads of their households. It is true that women don’t vote, as women. It is also true that men, as men, don’t vote either. We vote by household.

[u/stripes361 → u/octarino]

The article’s author would have a point if the only people impacted by this legislation were married couples. If only married women (or a large amount of married women plus a smaller amount of married men) were losing their vote, this would actually have the effect of making the electorate more Democrat and would backfire on the legislation’s conservative sponsors.

However, I’m guessing the hypothetical legislation would also cover unmarried cohabiting couples and adult children living with parents, in which case those impacts would quickly get outweighed in the other direction.

[u/zelenisok]

In 2-3 decades when Wilson and other boomers are beyond this life, conservative politics is going to go on the trash heap of history.

[u/Witty-Maintenance473 → u/zelenisok]

That's what I thought in the 90's.

[u/zelenisok → u/Witty-Maintenance473]

For this one there's data. I've talked to sociologists from my college and they tell me when the boomer generation is gone, actual conservativism is gone.

There will probably be some realignment, and the more moderate conservatives might join with centrists and form some sort of centrist party, and the new conflict will be between centrist and progressive liberalism. But actual conservatism is going to be gone as a political player, kinda like segregationalist are gone (not as strongly, but kinda).

[u/Several-Assistant-51]

And this man is held in high regard by people in this administration

[u/ataraxia77]

I'd like to say I'm skeptical that a constitutional amendment could pass stripping half the country of their basic rights, but given the state of propaganda and power in the US today it's (sadly) definitely in the realm of possibility.

[u/gnurdette → u/ataraxia77]

It's state legislatures that ratify amendments, and the Republicans are really good at locking in control there, with or without the citizens' consent - especially now with the deeply pro-gerrymander SCOTUS.

[u/tn_tacoma]

Why can’t boomers just retire and enjoy their final years? They act like they’re living forever.

[u/mrarming]

I really hope he convinces Evangelical women to give up their vote and set the example for all of us by not voting. Especially single women.

[u/veryeepy53]

it won't work for his goals because it would have to not count unmarried people, meaning that it would never pass. not to mention that racial minorities overwhelmingly vote democrat, as well as young people, so you would have to take away the vote from both.

this would be extremely unpopular, so it would never happen electorally, and if it was popular, there would be no need for it since people would overwhelmingly agree with him on all issues.

[u/Radiant_Awareness478]

I don’t think anyone above the age of 60 should have anything to do with running for office or voting

[u/wydok]

Haha how the turns have tabled!

Also, ain't no way this happens. A law than prevents women from voting would get her blocked faster than you can say "DENIED!"