Grassroots campaigns remind U.S. women: Votes are private

Tampon boxes, bathroom mirrors and cereal boxes have become the unlikely messaging boards for a disconnected effort to remind women in the U.S. that their votes are private.

Why it matters: Voters have needed a reminder in this hyper-partisan environment that while their party affiliation can be public, their ballots are secret.

State of play: Efforts to remind voters of ballot secrecy have taken different forms: anonymous pro-Harris sticky notes in high-traffic areas spotted on social media, as NBC reported; nonpartisan campaigns; and pop-up shops on Etsy selling notes that emphasize voter privacy.

• While the methods are different, the goal is the same: encourage people to vote how they want, free of social pressure from family members, spouses or peers.

Zoom out: There's some other indication these reminders are needed.

• More than 70% of New Mexico voters in a 2022 University of New Mexico survey released earlier this year said they think it's possible to learn someone's vote choices.
• "This is not true," the state's secretary of state Maggie Toulouse Oliver said on X in September. "Secret ballots are a cornerstone of American democracy."

HeadCount's executive director Lucille Wenegieme told Axios more prospective voters have asked about ballot secrecy this election at registration tables across the U.S. than previous cycles. HeadCount is a nonprofit that registers voters at concerts, festivals and other community events.

• Voting secrecy is a "core tenet" of American elections, Wenegieme emphasized.
• The questions on privacy reflect "a nebulous electorate," Wenegieme said. "Folks who due to social pressure or family dynamics might feel like they should be casting their ballot one way but might, for personal convictions, want to vote a different way."

Zoom in: Cathy Schlecter, who lives in a New York City suburb, has sold more than 3,000 packages of sticky notes with pre-written messages on Etsy since Harris announced her candidacy in July. She got the idea from Facebook.

• "Woman to woman," one of her nine designs reads, "no one sees your vote at the polls. Vote for the candidate who will protect your freedom, your family and your future."

Business co-owners Olivia Dreizen Howell and Jenny Dreizen, who founded the company Fresh Starts Registry, started the nonpartisan campaign Vote Without Fear in August.

• They told Axios the campaign was prompted by an Instagram follower's question: "Can my husband find out who I voted for?"

The big picture: The presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump is in a dead heat, multiple polls out Friday found.

• In a race this close, a small number of voters in swing states will have an outsized impact on the outcome.

Between the lines: Gender has in part defined the election — from the candidates to the electorate and the biggest issues, including reproductive rights.

• Young women and men voters have drifted increasingly further apart in their political views.

How marriage and sharing a household impacts women voters' decisions could also come into play.

• Slightly more women who are married in the U.S. identify as Republican or lean Republican (50%) versus Democrat (45%), according to Pew research from April.

In the case of some married white women, "their interests and the way they frame and understand their interests is just different" than before they were married, said Kelsy Kretschmer, a sociologist and associate professor at Oregon State University who studies gender and politics.

• Reproductive rights are a key difference this year for married women, who may have historically voted with their husbands based on shared social and economic outlooks, Kretschmer said.

Flashback: While more women voted for President Biden than Trump in 2020, a small majority of married women (52%) voted for Trump over Biden (47%), according to the National Women's Law Center.

• Hillary Clinton in 2017, while promoting her memoir about the 2016 campaign, shared a theory that white women were under "tremendous pressure from fathers and husbands and boyfriends and male employers not to vote for 'the girl.'"

Go deeper: Boys vs. girls election intensifies