Our thanks to a supporter for sending this in, a couple of days ago:

I have just been to vote in the local elections and a thought struck me. Given that men travel further to work and spend longer periods away from home during the course of their work, how many men have effectively been disenfranchised by their job today?

According to my voter card, it is technically possible to apply for a proxy vote even up to 5pm on the day of voting, but this is hardly easy when you are trying to carry out your job away from home at the same time, especially if you only find out you will be away at very short notice. Men who are married are likely to entrust their wives with a proxy vote. This of course means that their wife effectively gets two vote to her husband’s none – no one can possibly check if she used his vote as he intended.

Possibly, men are also more likely to miss voting due to having to work late unexpectedly. With more women working part time, it will be easier for women to access the polling stations at any point during the day.

It seems to me as though these factors add up to effective discrimination against men as a group. I wonder how much the voting ratio between men and women is skewed as a result. There is a great deal of debate – particularly in the USA – on how voter registration discriminates against certain groups, and any factor that might make it harder for one group than another to vote is seen as discriminatory. Is this not the same thing?

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