*A Texas mother of three was sentenced to five years in prison last year for voting illegally in the 2016 presidential election. She appealed her conviction this week, saying she was unaware her felony status made her ineligible to vote.
Crystal Mason was on supervised release after serving time for tax fraud when she filled out a provisional ballot, according to The Cut. Mason claims she didn’t know she wasn’t allowed to vote until the supervised release was complete.
According to HuffPost, she presented her case Tuesday before three Republican judges on the Texas Court of Appeals and argued that she was wrongly convicted and entitled to a new trial.
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Texas sentenced Crystal Mason, a Texas mother of three, to five years in prison.
Tomorrow, we and our partners will be in court fighting to have her sentence overturned.
Join us on Facebook after we get out of court to hear from Crystal. pic.twitter.com/U7LVLlwQtV
— ACLU of Texas (@ACLUTx) September 9, 2019
Texas law says convicted felons cannot vote if they are on “supervision.”
via Washington Post:
A person can be prosecuted for illegal voting if he or she “votes or attempts to vote in an election in which the person knows the person is not eligible to vote.”
On Tuesday, a three-judge panel heard the three-prong oral arguments:
(1) Mason did not vote in the 2016 election because her provisional ballot was never counted.
(2) The prosecution failed to prove that Mason knew she was ineligible to vote.
(3) The conditions of her release from federal prison did not amount to “supervision” under Texas law, meaning Mason would have been eligible to vote.
Mason’s case attracted national attention and was cited as an example of “an intimidation tactic meant to suppress Black voters and those with criminal records,” per The Cut.
Kim Cole, one of Mason’s lawyers, recently said, “This has nothing to do with whether or not she was eligible to vote. They don’t want folks who look like Crystal to show up at the polls.”
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