Reported Speech sentence problem

[Gravy]

Hi guys, first of all I want to say hello to everyone. I'm new in this forum and this is my first thread.

My Questions:

Can anybody tell me the right timeuse in this reported speech sentence, cause obviously it is wrong :

He explained that it "doesn't" matter which party you "vote" for nowadays, because they all "have" skeletons in the closet.

[Keswick (Contributor)]

This could be of help:

Indirekte Rede / Reported Speech

[Gravy]

thx keswick, but I am still not sure about the does thing... hm i tried it this way now:

He explained that it didn't matter which party you voted for nowadays, because they all had skeletons in the closet.

think this is right? I'm not sure...

anybody else got an idea if this is right?

[mottek]

I think you can't "vote a party",correct could be "elect"
best wishes mottek

[Keswick (Contributor)]

Hello mottek,

you can indeed vote for a party or a person.