My mom made me vote for Biden on my absentee ballot. What do I do?

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LiveSkype said:
I was going to ask someone at Town Hall to do it for me, as the ballot is in their possession.
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  1. It’s likely not with the staff at the city hall. But, in posssession of election officials.
  2. Submitted ballots can’t be destroyed, that’s illegal
  3. Having a human rummage through thousands of ballots to find your specific ballot, is a collosal waste of human resources and would be like finding a needle in a haystack
 
Limoncello4021 said:
Wrong. Not in the U.S. when it comes to voting. Her parents may have rules in the house, such as curfew, that she agrees to obey since she is in their house, but she is NOT under their rule in terms of her conscience. If you were 24 and your parents told you to do something offensive and potentially a sin, would you do it? If the answer is yes, something is really wrong here.
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Yes, There is something really wrong here. It is the behavior of the parents. I don’t know what the disability is, do you?
Have you lived with controlling parents? I have. It’s no bueno.
 
TK421 said:
But the OP said that her mom made her vote for Biden. This is not true. This isn’t honest. This is exactly what happens with siblings or with children in school, but it also sometimes happens with adults. A child does something mean to another child, so the child tells an adult, except they doctor up the story to make the offense appear much worse than what it was. This happens in all sorts of instances, in schools, in stores, in courts of law, etc. People distort the truth to make a person more guilty than what they are for one’s own advantage, and that is - at minimum - venially sinful. And yes, it’s slanderous. The mom might not have been acting charitably but saying that she forced her daughter to vote for somebody else is an entirely different level and makes the mother seem monstrous. It’s also an escape to avoid healthily handling problems because it wrongly transfers all the blame to the parent.
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I don’t think there’s enough information here to say that.

I’ve been in this sort of situation before. When you’re relying on someone for housing and food, then yes they can effectively force you just by wearing you down when you can’t get away. Typical english language uses “force” for much more than simply to refer to literal force. And you can’t have an adult conversation unless both parties are willing to engage with each other as adults. (Believe me, I’ve tried it.) It’s simply not possible to have an adult conversation with someone who insists on treating you as a child who needs to obey, and when you can’t get away from the situation it’s definitely possible to just get worn down because you simply can’t take any more.

To be quite clear, this is considered emotionally abusive behavior. While there’s little legal recourse, it’s absolutely something that social services should take seriously. Particularly when dealing with someone who requires support to live away from family. Sometimes you have to fight for them to actually take it seriously, though.
 
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  1. It’s likely not with the staff at the city hall. But, in posssession of election officials.
  2. Submitted ballots can’t be destroyed, that’s illegal
  3. Having a human rummage through thousands of ballots to find your specific ballot, is a collosal waste of human resources and would be like finding a needle in a haystack
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Actually, that’s not what happens in my state:
”When the Town Clerk receives the ballot, they check that the serial number and barcode match the voter who returned the ballot, and then they secure the absentee ballot, still sealed in its envelope, until Election Day.” Connecticut’s Absentee Ballot Process
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Ok, now show me the connecticut law that
  1. Allows the city hall clerk to destroy a submitted ballot
  2. Allows you to submit a second vote
 
Yes, I have: that’s what I stated above. Did you read the whole thread?
No, we didn’t know what her disability was, as I also stated above. But now she’s told us. It does not change the fact that something is really wrong here, that her parents are controlling her and should not be at age 24. That’s what I stated.
 
Servant31 said:
I could say no, and be prepared for, not joking, 24 hours of passive aggressive, them “fixing the relationship”, etc etc etc… After years and years of this your an emotional wreck.

You now throw faith in here and as a child you often have no idea what your rights are. And sadly if I tried to find out ever you get the… “how dare
you go against your PARENTS!..HEATHEN!, PRIDE!” It’s freaking nuts I’m telling you.
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Only 24h? Lucky! I’ve dealt with multiple hours a day for months on end. And then being told I was clearly in the wrong because I broke down crying and if I was really right I wouldn’t be so emotional.

(/s)
 
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LiveSkype said:
tried the whole “independent living” thing before. It was a DISASTER.
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I hope that you are receiving the assistance you need through whatever local or state agencies handle such in your area. I have some experience in this area from the other side as my adult son is on the spectrum and is receiving assistance from SSA and the Medicaid Waiver system. He no longer lives with me, but he is not living alone either, and this assistance is what makes that possible.
 
If your mom “made” you vote for someone you didn’t want to, then in essence you didn’t vote and she voted twice.
 
DarkLight said:
I don’t think there’s enough information here to say that.
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There’s an exceedingly apparent reason for why the mother is so unpopular in this thread, and that is because the mother has expressed views that are against the Church and against the dignity of life, and so the natural inclination is to vilify her in other ways as well.

You’re right that there’s not enough information to make a perfectly certain answer, and that is true for literally every thread that has ever existed on CAF. Even when you talk to people in real life you almost never get all of the information, so you’re left with making a best judgment of what the person says, and the original poster said quite plainly that she got tired of arguing and then checked off Biden on the ballot.

Is this emotionally abusive? I don’t know and I won’t say, but I do know that if it is, then it means that over 50% or possibly over 75% of American homes have emotional abuse going on in them, because these sort of arguments around the kitchen table are excessively common and you could not have social services adequately address all of them if they had 10 times the amount of human resources that they currently have.
 
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TK421 said:
Is this emotionally abusive? I don’t know and I won’t say, but I do know that if it is, then it means that over 50% or possibly over 75% of American homes have emotional abuse going on in them, because these sort of arguments around the kitchen table are exceedingly common and you could not have social services adequately address all of them if they had 10 times the amount of human resources that they currently have.
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I think you are misinterpreting what’s going on in the OP. The reason the mother is unpopular is because it’s absolutely inappropriate and a major violation of our rights in the USA to do this. Ballots are supposed to be secret, actually, so even looking over someone’s shoulder while they fill it out is unacceptable. If someone requires assistance, the most the assistant can do legally is fill it out as directed by the voter and ensure that it’s legally correct. (And I voted for Biden, so that’s not the reason I don’t approve of the mother’s actions.)

I lived through very similar abuse, and it is NOT a common argument around the kitchen table. I think for many people though, if you haven’t lived with that kind of family, they tend to downplay it to what they think of as a “normal” family argument. I can tell you I could absolutely see my mother doing this, and it wouldn’t be a normal argument. If you’re arguing until you wear someone out or have berated them into giving in, then you’ve crossed the line into abuse. I doubt that’s what goes on in most families.
 
DarkLight said:
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TK421:
Is this emotionally abusive? I don’t know and I won’t say, but I do know that if it is, then it means that over 50% or possibly over 75% of American homes have emotional abuse going on in them, because these sort of arguments around the kitchen table are exceedingly common and you could not have social services adequately address all of them if they had 10 times the amount of human resources that they currently have.
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I think you are misinterpreting what’s going on in the OP. The reason the mother is unpopular is because it’s absolutely inappropriate and a major violation of our rights in the USA to do this. Ballots are supposed to be secret, actually, so even looking over someone’s shoulder while they fill it out is unacceptable. If someone requires assistance, the most the assistant can do legally is fill it out as directed by the voter and ensure that it’s legally correct. (And I voted for Biden, so that’s not the reason I don’t approve of the mother’s actions.)

I lived through very similar abuse, and it is NOT a common argument around the kitchen table. I think for many people though, if you haven’t lived with that kind of family, they tend to downplay it to what they think of as a “normal” family argument. I can tell you I could absolutely see my mother doing this, and it wouldn’t be a normal argument. If you’re arguing until you wear someone out or have berated them into giving in, then you’ve crossed the line into abuse. I doubt that’s what goes on in most families.
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I’m sorry DarkLight but I simply can’t/won’t believe this without further reading from case studies.

Families getting into arguments and squabbles over politics (and life decisions in general) are exceedingly common and we would be institutionalizing the majority of the country if our standards were that sensitive. There would possibly be more human beings in some sort of abusive situation than there would be human beings in “normal” living conditions. This really isn’t hard to imagine considering divorce and separations is over 50% and almost 100% of these families have some pretty heavy arguing and stress going on for at least some phase in time, and that isn’t even considering what happens in other homes.

I’m not saying the OP isn’t being abused but that’s just not something I’m going to guess about.
 
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TK421 said:
Families getting into arguments and squabbles over politics (and life decisions in general) are exceedingly common and we would be institutionalizing the majority of the country if our standards were that sensitive
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Getting into arguments and squabbles is a completely different thing from berating someone until they give in because they can’t get peace otherwise.
 
TK421 said:
Families getting into arguments and squabbles over politics (and life decisions in general) are exceedingly common
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Yes, but arguing is one thing, while haranguing into submission is something completely different. It is like the difference between a normal police interrogation and teams of officers questioning you nonstop and insisting you confess to whatever it is they think you did without a break for more than a full day.
 
whatistrue said:
Yes, but arguing is one thing, while haranguing into submission is something completely different. It is like the difference between a normal police interrogation and teams of officers questioning you nonstop and insisting you confess to whatever it is they think you did without a break for more than a full day.
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Which is a very imaginative take on the original post, which sounds more like a typical argument over subjects related to the elections, and one in which to some degree is happening in millions of homes throughout the country this month. I don’t even comment on how much this goes on in social media because it is astronomically more common there.

If those argument were a regular and chronic occurrence, that would be much worse and much less common thing.

Again, we’re implicitly institutionalizing over half the world population of planet Earth if we’re going to assume that the mother is emotionally abusive based on the original post. I’ve seen much, much, much worse in actual cases where social services needed to get involved in a family.

I do thank you though for talking to me and I will think about the points that both you and DarkLight have made. I am sure you are trying to do what is best and that is good.

Peace.
 
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Your mother really overstepped here. Regardless of who you wanted to vote for it’s your vote, she had no right to interfere with it. You could have voted for Micky Mouse as a write-in and it’d still be your constitutional right.

In the short term you should probably ask the town clerk to shred “your” vote and let you fill out a real one. In the long term I’m not sure how to proceed, but asking your priest for advice is a good step.
 
TK421 said:
Which is a very imaginative take on the original post, which sounds more like a typical argument over subjects related to the elections, and one in which to some degree is happening in millions of homes throughout the country this month. I don’t even comment on how much this goes on in social media because it is astronomically more common there.
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Part of the issue here is that actually hanging over someone while they fill out a ballot is very weird and controlling. The default, at least in the USA, is that ballots should be filled out and sealed privately. At most a helper can make sure it’s filled out validly, and even then that should only be done if someone is unable to do it themselves. That’s definitely inclining me to think there’s some real issues going on.
 
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