Judge denies retrial for Texas woman who got 5 years for voting illegally

A Texas woman who was sentenced to five years in prison for illegally voting in the 2016 elections has been denied a motion for a new trial. 

The same judge who handed Crystal Mason the controversial sentence has denied her motion for a new trial in a 16-page ruling late Monday, the Star-Telegram of Fort Worth, Texas, reported.

Mason was convicted of casting a provisional ballot in 2016 while she was on supervised release for a 2011 tax fraud conviction back in March.

Convicted felons are not allowed to vote in Texas until they finish out their full sentence.

Since her conviction, a petition has been widely circulated calling for all charges against her to be dropped with more than 38,000 signatures, with many saying that the black woman’s sentence is an example of African-Americans being given harsher sentences.

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“She’s one step closer to going to prison for a vote that didn’t even count,” Alison Grinter, Mason’s attorney, told the local publication. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to get this case before fresh eyes in the appellate court and have a better outcome.” 

Grinter also said the ruling resembles a controversial voter purge policy the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in Ohio the same day. 

The Supreme Court upheld the state’s “use it or lose it” policy on Monday, under which voters who have not voted in two years are flagged and sent a confirmation notice. Voters who fail to respond to the notice and don’t vote within the next two years are removed from the rolls. 

“Those who are working to suppress voting need to prove that in-person voting fraud is a real thing,” Grinter said. “And they use cases like this to do that. It’s sad those kinds of efforts have to stand on the backs of people like Crystal.”