Texas mother Crystal Mason appeals five-year sentence for illegal voting
Source: CNN
By Taylor Barnes, CNN
Updated 10:33 PM ET, Tue September 10, 2019
(CNN)A Texas mother sentenced to five years in prison for voting illegally in the 2016 election appealed her conviction Tuesday, saying she did not know her status as a felon on release made her ineligible to cast a ballot.
Crystal Mason, an African-American mother of three, was on supervised release after serving time for tax fraud when she filled out a provisional ballot. She has said she did not know that as a convicted felon in Texas, she could not vote until the supervised release was complete.
Tuesday's half-hour hearing before a three-judge panel in Fort Worth focused largely on whether the provisional ballot that Mason cast actually constitutes a vote. A court representative told CNN there is no date set for a decision.
. . .
Voting rights activists compare Mason's case to other voter fraud convictions, such as Terri Lynn Rote, an Iowa woman who tried to cast two votes for President Trump, and Russ Casey, a Texas justice of the peace who admitted to turning in fake signatures in order to get on a primary ballot. Those defendants, who are white, received sentences of two and five years' probation.
Read more: https://us.cnn.com/2019/09/10/us/texas-woman-ineligible-voting-appeal/index.html
JonLP24
(29,322 posts)Most people aren't the Boston Marathon Bomber.
Takket
(21,421 posts)In N.C.-09 got five years.
Hope it works out for her. This is a pretty blatant violation of the 8th amendment.
Igel
(35,191 posts)In some states, what happened in North Carolina would have been legal or so close to legal that nobody would have pursued charges.
Texas is one of them. The other tends (D) so it's best unnamed.
States run elections. There are no federal elections. Just elections for federal office, mediated by the states.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)lark
(22,993 posts)Ow boo hoo, her little attempt to vote for drumpf was illegal and she needs to do the time. No mercy since she voted to hurt other Americans, she needs to feel the pain she participated in. If this was CA and she voted against drumpf illegally, there would be no doubt about her incarceration and Faux Snooze and Sinclair would be trumpeting this to the moon while NYT also makes it front page news Since it was pro-drumpf, yawn, no promenient placement in the news and get hidden.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,146 posts)Firestorm49
(4,002 posts)Did anybody go to jail yet? And if they (he) does, will it be for 30 days? North Carolina? Sorry, with all of the GOP election fraud its hard to keep up. I apologize for this lapse of memory, so dont lambaste me.