Texas criminal court agrees to review Fort Worth woman’s illegal voting conviction
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday granted a review of the case of Crystal Mason, of Fort Worth, who was sentenced to five years in prison for filling out a provisional ballot that was never counted in the 2016 presidential election, according to the ACLU.
The Court of Criminal Appeals will review a lower court decision that found individuals can be prosecuted for illegal voting even when they did not know they were ineligible to vote.
No oral arguments will be heard by the Court of Criminal Appeals in this case.
“This has been a long journey, but I never gave up faith,” Mason said Wednesday in an ACLU of Texas news release. “I’m hopeful that the judges will understand that any Texan like me, who at most unknowingly makes an innocent mistake, should not be punished for it.”
Her illegal voting conviction in Tarrant County has become widely controversial.
“This decision gives Crystal Mason a chance to stay with her family and community and avoid going to jail when she did not intend to do anything wrong,” said Tommy Buser-Clancy, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas, in the news release. “It also provides an opportunity for the court to reassure Texas voters that innocent misunderstandings in the voting process won’t land them in jail.”
In a brief in response to a previous appeal, the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office argued that Mason did know she wasn’t eligible to vote, according to the Texas Tribune. “(Mason] does not even fall within the group of people whom she claims [the Help America Vote Act] is designed to protect. Her conviction for voting in an election when she knew she was not eligible to vote does not run afoul of HAVA in any way,” the district attorney’s office wrote.
The ACLU and other legal representatives requested that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals review Mason’s case.
In the 2016 election, Mason submitted a provisional ballot, later saying she was not aware she could not vote while on federally supervised release for a previous tax fraud conviction. Her ballot was not counted — provisional ballots are meant to allow a voter to cast a potential ballot even if their name does not appear on the list of registered voters. The ballot is examined later for validity.
Nearly 4,500 other people submitted provisional ballots in Tarrant County in the 2016 election. Of those, 3,990 provisional ballots were rejected, the Texas Tribune reported.
In March 2018, Mason was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for illegal voting. The Second District Appeals Court upheld her conviction after a hearing in Tarrant County in September 2019.
This story was originally published March 31, 2021 at 1:23 PM.
