Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation (WP)

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/03/30/texas-woman-sentenced-to-5-years-in-prison-for-voting-while-on-probation/

Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation
by Meagan Flynn | March 30 at 6:01 AM


Crystal Mason (Tarrant County Jail)

If she had known it was illegal, Crystal Mason said she would have never cast a vote in the 2016 presidential election.

The 43-year-old former tax preparer hadn’t even planned on voting until her mother encouraged her to do it. She had only recently been released from federal prison for a 2012 tax fraud conviction, in which she pleaded guilty to inflating returns for her clients, her attorney, J. Warren St. John, told The Washington Post.

She was still on community supervision at the time of the election — but no one, including her probation officer, St. John said, ever told her that being a felon on supervision meant she couldn’t vote under Texas law.

The case is yet another illustration of Texas’s zealous crackdown on voter fraud, a problem that state GOP leaders have described as “rampant” in the past but for which they have yet to provide hard proof, save for isolated cases such as Mason’s.

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Meanwhile:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/steve-curtis-former-colorado-gop-chairman-sentenced-for-voter-fraud/

January 27, 2018, 10:11 PM
Former Colorado GOP chairman sentenced for voter fraud

GREELEY, Colo. -- The former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party was sentenced to four years of probation and 300 hours of community service for voter fraud. Steve Curtis blamed a "major diabetic episode" for causing him to vote his ex-wife's absentee ballot in October 2016.

[leftynyc]

1. This may not be the best case

to prove your otherwise excellent point. Ms. Mason was a convicted felon and that figures into any punishment for a subsequent crime. The gop guy was a first offender (I think).

[BSdetect]

2. Lets not forget these harsh punishments when its drumph's turn for sentencing.

His should be off the charts.

[lsewpershad]

3. Notice

any difference?

[NCTraveler]

4. This seems so messed up.

“The affidavit was a stop sign in front of her face,” Smid said.

It all boils down to that from what I am reading. That is not enough, IMO.

Five years is also abusive, even for a recently convicted felon. I hope the appeal has an impact on this.

[dalton99a]

5. Rosa Maria Ortega got eight years and she didn't have a criminal record

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.”

[NCTraveler]

6. Five years is way too much for Ms. Mason.

From what the case hinged on, being found guilty was way too much.

[LisaL]

7. That's really excessive considering she apparently wasn't trying to deceive anyone

and simply didn't know she wasn't eligible to vote.

[Major Nikon]

8. This makes me wish I hadn't passed on my chance to serve on the Tarrant Grand Jury

I would have no-billed this one in a heartbeat.

[Hortensis]

9. Strong social conservatism at work. Conservatives have a dark view

human nature in general and that people will be bad if not deterred by punishment.

But this level? Five years for this poor woman for voting on probation? Voting should be regarded as an act of citizen virtue balanced against breaking a law, not criminality coming out. This is the nasty right at work, the ones who insist on hurting people with harshly punitive sentences, and the courts are being packed with their judges.

Getting them out of power has to be a top priority.

COUNTDOWN TO MIDTERMS: 220 days

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

10. If that's the case

Drumpf deserves the death penalty for treason