Woman Sentenced to 5 Years for illegally voting in 2016

[DonViejo]

BY MITCH MITCHELL

[e-mail]

March 28, 2018 08:50 PM

Updated 1 hour 58 minutes ago

FORT WORTH - A judge sentenced a Rendon woman to five years in prison Wednesday for voting illegally in the 2016 presidential election while she was on supervised release from a 2011 fraud conviction.

Crystal Mason, 43, waived her right to a jury trial and chose to have state District Judge Ruben Gonzalez assess her sentence.

J. Warren St. John, her defense attorney, said after the verdict that an appeal had already been filed and that he is hopeful his client will soon be released on bond.

"I find it amazing that the government feels she made this up," St. John told the court. "She was never told that she couldn't vote, and she voted in good faith. Why would she risk going back to prison for something that is not going to change her life?"

MORE
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article207176829.html

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Gotta keep those voters intimidated !

Anyone who has a criminal record, or thinks The Man is out to get them, will be more relectuant to vote after this. Mission Accomplished !

Meanwhile, the perpetrators of election fraud -- not voter fraud -- get away without even an investigation.

[Eliot Rosewater]

2. Yep. Time for talk, over. Time for action. If we dont take back both house and senate we

will be in an actual war for our lives.

[unblock]

3. this is horrendous! just invalidate the vote! why prison time at all, never mind 5 years???

well, first off, i strongly oppose government taking away the right to vote from anyone.

only a corrupt government takes away the right to vote. committing a crime has nothing to do with anyone's representation in government, and disenfranchisement isn't a deterrent, so i strongly believe ex-felons and even current felons should be allowed to vote.


but even if you agree to take away someone's right to vote, just don't let them vote, and invalidate their vote if they try!

how on earth trying to vote using your own name could possibly constitute a crime is beyond me.

at best this is the government trying to put someone else in prison for their own administrative incompetence.

[Generic Brad]

4. At worst, it should have been a small fine

Let the punishment fit the crime. We either have a horrible judge, horrible sentencing guidelines, or a horrible combination of the two in this case.

[dalton99a]

5. Not the first time in Texas:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/us/illegal-voting-gets-texas-woman-8-years-in-prison-and-certain-deportation.html

Despite repeated statements by Republican political leaders that American elections are rife with illegal voting, credible reports of fraud have been hard to find and convictions rarer still.

That may help explain the unusually heavy penalty imposed on Rosa Maria Ortega, 37, a permanent resident and a mother of four who lives outside Dallas. On Thursday, a Fort Worth judge sentenced her to eight years in prison — and almost certainly deportation later — after she voted illegally in elections in 2012 and 2014.

The sentence for Ms. Ortega, who was brought to this country by her mother as an infant, “shows how serious Texas is about keeping its elections secure,” Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement. Her lawyer called it an egregious overreaction, made to score political points, against someone who wrongly believed she was eligible to vote.

“She has a sixth-grade education. She didn’t know she wasn’t legal,” said Ms. Ortega’s lawyer, Clark Birdsall, who once oversaw voter fraud prosecutions in neighboring Dallas County. “She can own property; she can serve in the military; she can get a job; she can pay taxes. But she can’t vote, and she didn’t know that.”

[unblock]

8. that article points out one of the main reasons why disenfranchisement is horrendous --

"she can pay taxes, but she can't vote."

our founders called that "taxation without representation" and build a revolution around that principle.

[csziggy]

7. She had not finished serving her sentence for her previous crime

For the link in the OP:
"Mason responded that she was never told by the federal court, her supervision officer, the election workers or U.S. District Judge John McBryde, the sentencing judge in her fraud case, that she would not be able to vote in elections until she finished serving her sentence, supervised release included."

I infer that she would have been eligible to vote once her supervised release period was completed. But no one explained this to her. Hopefully her appeal will free her from this new sentence.

[unblock]

9. my guess is that the way it's set up, she signed a form to vote, which said, in the fine print,

that she wasn't a convicted felon. so, technically, they have her on fraud, and then on violating parole as well.

when you phrase it that way, 5 years doesn't seem nearly as unreasonable.


what's unreasonable, of course, aside from taking away the right to vote in the first place, is that they set up an administrative trap for her where no trap is necessary. when processing her provisional ballot, they can check to see if she's a convicted felon easily enough. making it a test that can lead to 5 year imprisonment if you get it wrong is stupid at best.

[hlthe2b]

10. uggh. she should have had a jury trial.