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Texas Woman Sentenced to 5 Years for Voting While on Probation

HeadlineMar 30, 2018

In Texas, a judge sentenced a woman from the Dallas-Fort Worth area to five years in prison Wednesday on charges of illegally voting, after she cast a ballot in the 2016 presidential election. Crystal Mason, who’s African-American, said she cast a provisional ballot in good faith after she arrived at her usual polling place and was told her name was not on the rolls. Mason was on supervised release from a 2011 felony fraud conviction at the time, making her ineligible to vote under Texas state law. She was sentenced to five years in prison by state District Judge Ruben Gonzalez after she waived her right to a jury trial. According to the Sentencing Project, almost a half-million Texans were disenfranchised in 2016 due to felony convictions.

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