‘Stop it now’: Former prosecutor warns against one of the oldest methods of ‘voter suppression’

Donald Trump’s right wing is ready to alienate voters who oppose him, and the former president’s critics shouldn’t buy it, a former federal prosecutor said Sunday.

Former prosecutor Joyce Vance said over the weekend that she had heard “a lot of people expressing concern that the vote won’t matter in November, people saying on social media and in person conversations that Trump will steal the election or that the courts will.”

“If you start thinking that way, I want you to stop right now. It’s one of the oldest voter deterrent strategies: telling you not to bother voting because your vote won’t count, that it doesn’t matter,” she added. “And that’s simply not true. You only have to look at the 2020 election to understand how powerful our right to vote is in the face of a potential despot.”

READ ALSO : How The Onion’s Founding Editor Finds Humor in the Dark Trump Era

Vance added in his Substack post Sunday that “thinking that Trump is simply going to steal the election is a form of repression. Don’t do that to yourself or to the Republic. If there’s ever a time to get ready to vote, it’s this coming week.”

“Recent polls are not as good for Joe Biden as he might have hoped and many people on social media are suggesting that a Trump victory is inevitable. Of course, we know that is not the case,” she said. “Polls are mixed and the people who push a certain narrative are not always pure in their motivations and are often not who they claim to be online. November is still a long way off. The polls leading up to the French snap election, which showed a quick and easy victory for Le Pen and the far right, were completely wrong. And as the Angry Staffer account tweeted this morning, ‘Polls don’t vote.’”

Read the full article here.