Conviction for illegal voting

March 29, 2024 5:19 AM

Crystal Mason: Texas woman sentenced to 5 years over voting error acquitted. Mason, who has remained out of prison on an appeal bond, said in a telephone interview on Thursday evening that she received the news while going through a drive-through and became emotional. “I was thrown into this fight for voting rights and will keep swinging to ensure no other citizen has to face what I’ve faced and endured for the past seven years, a political ploy where minority voting rights are under attack,” she added.
posted by tiny frying pan (42 comments total)

(I used a link to the Guardian, which I don't love. But most other links had phrased the headline in such a way as to imply she voted deliberately knowing she was ineligible.)
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:20 AM on March 29 [7 favorites]

THANK GOODNESS. The fact that this woman who made a genuine error just trying to participate in democracy had to fight so hard for her freedom, while people literally trying to destroy the US are getting off scot free, is an absolute travesty.
posted by obfuscation at 5:37 AM on March 29 [57 favorites]

Meanwhile: Georgia Republican party official is found to have voted illegally 9 times [WaPo gift link]

A Georgia Republican official who pushed false claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” was found to have voted illegally nine times, a judge ruled this week.

Brian Pritchard, first vice chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine, as well as investigative costs, and be publicly reprimanded.

tl;dr: he voted while on probation for check fraud, a felony; he's also a talk show host and owns "fetchyournews", a propaganda site. White dude, obvs.

I'm glad that Ms Mason is free, and I am full of rage at the different treatment of her (ONE provisional ballot) and this guy (9 votes which, at the time, were counted).
posted by Pallas Athena at 6:07 AM on March 29 [62 favorites]

I don’t understand laws that don’t permit prisoners to vote. They and their families still have to live under the laws and systems that are shaped by voting. The whole thing is and was stupid.
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:32 AM on March 29 [27 favorites]

It is horrifying the degree to which "criminals" are dehumanized in the US. People treat animals with more dignity and compassion that people who are or have been incarcerated.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 6:50 AM on March 29 [12 favorites]

Texas Tribune, for those who don't love the Grauniad: Texas appeals court overturns Crystal Mason’s conviction, 5-year sentence for illegal voting Didn't think this would happen; delighted to be wrong.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 7:03 AM on March 29 [11 favorites]

She didn't know that she should have just been the AG the whole time.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 7:09 AM on March 29 [17 favorites]

Excellent news! And today I learned about the Texas Tribune! Independent, nonprofit news. Enjoyed the article, donated. Thank you gentlyepigrams.
posted by evilmomlady at 7:17 AM on March 29 [6 favorites]

Dunno about other European countries but in Poland each prison (and each hospital) is actually obligated to organise a polling station and allow prisoners to vote while incarcerated. The only prisoners not allowed to vote are those where it's part of the sentence - usually murder and similar very serious crimes. The US system feels like it makes sense only if you treat imprisonment as a replacement slavery.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 7:59 AM on March 29 [15 favorites]

toodleydoodley: I don’t understand laws that don’t permit prisoners to vote.
I'm guessing this pre-dates 1776? UK: If you are convicted serving a custodial sentence are not allowed to vote whilst you are detained in custody. In Ireland, since the Electoral (Amendment) Act of 2006, prisoners can apply for a postal vote.
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:05 AM on March 29 [1 favorite]

I think the theory of not permitting prisoners to vote is that criminals are awful people who shouldn't have an influence. This is a bad theory, and I'll note that in the US, it's not just forbidding prisoners from voting, it's forbidding ex-prisoners from voting.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:13 AM on March 29 [12 favorites]

(It’s so it can be enforced unevenly and in a racist manner)
posted by Artw at 8:15 AM on March 29 [13 favorites]

I'm glad that Ms Mason is free, and I am full of rage at the different treatment of her (ONE provisional ballot) and this guy (9 votes which, at the time, were counted).

Also...HE'S A REPUBLICAN PARTY OFFICIAL. That's not an ill informed dentist/plumber/programmer although frankly, everybody knows you vote one time... it's a freaking party official, that's his fucking job to know that shit.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 8:34 AM on March 29 [16 favorites]

I don’t understand laws that don’t permit prisoners to vote. They and their families still have to live under the laws and systems that are shaped by voting.

See how it connects to the 13th amendment. Prison slave labor is a lot easier to maintain when you remove all legal avenues for the affected population to say to the government 'stop allowing prison slave labor', and then demonize the same demographic to everyone else who just happens to benefit from prison slave labor.
posted by FatherDagon at 8:36 AM on March 29 [7 favorites]

Loosing the ability to vote while incarcerated makes sense to me. Voting is not a right protected via the constitution, and so loosing that ability is in alignment with many of the other limitation we put upon prisoners.

Forbidding the previously incarcerated from voting is disgusting and wrong, and I honestly don't understand how it is allowed. Once you are out you are out, and anything else is just straight up discrimination.
posted by Frayed Knot at 8:37 AM on March 29 [5 favorites]

I'm so upset about this. Provisional ballots are intended to be cross-checked and validated before they are counted. If she was ineligible to vote, then the provisional ballot wouldn't have been counted and there would have been no effect on the election.

I was an election judge in the 2016 election here in California, and I gave out numerous provisional ballots to people who weren't sure if they were registered, or weren't sure if they were at the right precinct, or or or. The idea that any one of those people might have been prosecuted for what I did is absolutely horrifying.

It's Texas. But nobody should have been prosecuted for this.
posted by suelac at 8:55 AM on March 29 [25 favorites]

In Australia you can't vote while in prison, but you can vote the minute you've been released from prison.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:05 AM on March 29 [2 favorites]

The instant you have convict disenfranchisement, you have an incentive to criminalize people who vote against you. We have repeatedly demonstrated an inability to refuse that incentive.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:08 AM on March 29 [32 favorites]

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.“
posted by torokunai at 9:20 AM on March 29 [20 favorites]

Meanwhile, Georgia is thinking about making it quite a lot easier to challenge voter registrations. Wonder why.

...if that law passes, I'm gonna be very disappointed if local activists don't immediately weaponize it against every Republican they can find.

I am, of course, fully prepared for disappointment.
posted by aramaic at 10:00 AM on March 29 [7 favorites]

With Republicans, every accusation is a confession.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:08 AM on March 29 [8 favorites]

Six years of having this nonsense prison threat over her head. At least it's a modicum of justice.

Hardly a counterbalance but nice to have good news after Texas AG Paxton weaseled out of a nine-year-delayed felony trial for his financial fraud in the 2010s.

I don’t understand laws that don’t permit prisoners to vote.

Not just prisoners. In many states people with certain felony convictions on their record can't vote for the rest of their lives, long after they have served their sentence.

Forget the history and justifications for why it's like that. In practice today it's a form of voter suppression that specifically targets African American voters. That's been particularly evident in the various ways Florida has tried to keep suppressing votes after 65% of the state's people voted to give back voting ability to folks with convictions.

Voting is a right in the United States, not a privilege or reward. States that deny people's voting rights are acting un-American.
posted by Nelson at 10:35 AM on March 29 [11 favorites]

It's not only about racism. My first exposure to the issue of convict disenfranchisement was an essay by a gay man. I read it sometime in the 80s, I think. His point was that with homosexual acts being a felony (this is from memory), this meant that if he was convicted, he'd lost a significant way of opposing the law.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:04 AM on March 29 [10 favorites]

I hope she gets compensation, or at least well-paid speaking gigs.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 11:38 AM on March 29 [1 favorite]

Voting is not a right protected via the constitution

Interestingly, there is a movement to get the Right To Vote enshrined in the Constitution. Something worth considering, IMO.
posted by hippybear at 12:18 PM on March 29 [3 favorites]

Also...HE'S A REPUBLICAN PARTY OFFICIAL. That's not an ill informed dentist/plumber/programmer although frankly, everybody knows you vote one time... it's a freaking party official, that's his fucking job to know that shit.

It appears from the linked article that he voted in 9 different elections while prohibited from voting due to his felony record, not 9 times in the same election. So from what I can tell he did essentially the same thing as Crystal Mason except intentionally, repeatedly, unapologetically, and white republican-ly.
posted by doift at 12:32 PM on March 29 [17 favorites]

From the ACLU.org who joined her legal team:

Crystal was shocked to see that the state’s key witness was none other than her next-door neighbor of nine years [Dietrich], who volunteered as an election judge. She couldn’t understand why someone who she shared a street with would be a part of an effort to tear apart her life. She worried it had to do with race. Hers is one of only three Black families in her neighborhood, and they have experienced hostility from neighbors over the years....

The state’s other witness was Jerrod Streibich, a 16-year-old whom Mr. Dietrich had recruited to volunteer at the polling place....At trial, he suggested that he knew Crystal had read all of the language on the provisional ballot because he was sitting four to five feet away from the table she was sitting at and he had “glanced” at her while she was filling out the form.

Strangely, Crystal’s attorney did not interrogate Mr. Dietrich’s possible bias or reasons for going to extraordinary and unusual lengths to incriminate Crystal, like personally contacting the district attorney, an acquaintance of his, about her provisional ballot...Finally, her attorney chose not to call witnesses on Crystal’s behalf.

That she that she received ineffective legal representation at trial is also part of her appeal. The page also discusses Texas AG Paxton's claim in 2019 that 100,000 non-citizens were registered to vote in Texas which quickly fell apart due to a data entry error.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 12:38 PM on March 29 [12 favorites]

Red states are voter suppression states
posted by eustatic at 12:41 PM on March 29 [12 favorites]

So, a hate crime legitimized by state law. Gotcha.
And of course, the republican white man gets off just about scott free. If 5 years is worth one mistake, his butt should be in jail for at least 35. Makes me wonder how voters that think someone dishonest enough to kite checks is trustworthy enough to be in public office.
This country is so f***ed up.
posted by BlueHorse at 2:44 PM on March 29 [7 favorites]

The people who are (correctly!) noting that it's unconscionable to deny prisoners the right to vote: in the US, it's even worse than that. Prisoners, you see, are counted in the census in the district in which they are incarcerated. Are you a Republican in a rural congressional district containing a prison? No worries -- most of the people who make up your district can't vote against you!
posted by adrienneleigh at 3:10 PM on March 29 [14 favorites]

The instant you have convict disenfranchisement, you have an incentive to criminalize people who vote against you. We have repeatedly demonstrated an inability to refuse that incentive

One thing Canada's constitution gets right is that the right to vote cannot be removed.

We have other rights that can be removed for situational reasons - even the right to life can be stripped with sufficient justification. But not the right to vote.
posted by NotAYakk at 3:18 PM on March 29 [8 favorites]

I thought it was a well-known that felony disenfranchisement was to skew elections? The impact has been particularly egregious in African American communities (“why?” you ask), but—as mentioned above—it certainly doesn’t only affect post-Reconstructiom African Americans, the period when these laws were largely enacted (ie 14th Amendment, or again a burst of these laws post-Civil Rights Act). They’re also meant to disenfranchise those outside the political majority. Why take my word for? You don’t have to worry about your opponents’ political ideology if you can just find convenient ways to criminalize their existence.

You could ask, why would you let “anti-social” criminals participate in making laws? And I’d ask, why would it be an issue in any country that the imprisoned and felony populations would affect the outcome of elections #Murica? “Criminals” should be allowed to vote to protect against tyranny, otherwise you need only criminalize someone’s way-of-being to ensure tyrany, stamped with the approval of the “democratically elect.”
posted by rubatan at 5:17 PM on March 29 [6 favorites]

I didn’t mean I didn’t understand why laws would be passed to stop prisoners and the formerly convicted from voting. I get how race, class, and wealth are exploited in politics. I meant I didn’t understand why so many other people would cheerfully go along with it, when such practices are bad for almost everybody
posted by toodleydoodley at 5:32 PM on March 29 [1 favorite]

I just looked up the AEC website to check on Australians voting from prison, and if their sentence is less than 3 years, voting while physically in jail is COMPULSORY. If their sentence is 3 years or more, they can't vote until they have been released from jail.

"Can prisoners vote in by-elections, federal elections, and referendums?

If a prisoner is serving a full-time sentence of less than three years, it is compulsory to vote
in a by-election, federal election and referendum.

Prisoners serving a sentence of three years or longer cannot vote until after they have been
released from prison."

https://www.aec.gov.au/Enrolling_to_vote/files/fact-sheet-enrolling-and-voting-from-prison.pdf
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:03 PM on March 29 [3 favorites]

Every prisoner and every ex-prisoner should be able to vote, period, with the possible exception of people who are convicted of voter fraud or election fraud.

"But what about murderers and rapists?" Well, in the USA only something like 3% of rapists are convicted of a felony. I don't have the stats for murderers, but murder has at best about a 50% clearance rate. So murderers and rapists are already voting, constantly. Also, it's completely and utterly corrosive to free and fair elections if people don't get to vote. Yes, even very bad people.
posted by adrienneleigh at 10:16 PM on March 29 [10 favorites]

Felons not being allowed to vote is a major theme of The New Jim Crow. The thesis of the book is that society's tools of control have shifted over the generations but never been undone. Slavery -> Jim Crow -> mass incarceration. It was really fucking convincing.
posted by macrael at 11:02 PM on March 29 [9 favorites]

In addition to the guy from Georgia, there's this guy who actually should have known he was ineligible to vote,

Christ, what an a**hole
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 4:01 AM on March 30 [1 favorite]

From Mason's Sept. 30, 2019 Opinion piece in The Washington Post (+ archived link): [W]hen I had my welcome-home party after returning from prison this year (I had to serve extra time in federal prison because my illegal-voting conviction was considered a violation of the terms of my release), I had a voter-registration table there for younger adults. It was a party with a purpose. I see hope in the new up-and-coming generation. They’re loud, and they speak out about their rights. They’re making noise in a good way, because they know in their hearts that if our votes didn’t matter, the system wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop us.
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:58 AM on March 30 [4 favorites]

One thing Canada's constitution gets right is that the right to vote cannot be removed.
posted by NotAYakk at 5:18 PM on March 29

I am a Canadian citizen who was disenfranchised for about six years because of the five-year rule, but it was overturned and now citizens living abroad for more than five years can still vote in the last riding in which they resided. That ruling was because of the charter right to vote (translation for non-Canadians: the charter is our constitution).
posted by joannemerriam at 1:21 PM on March 30 [4 favorites]

I knew about this case, but did not know the details about her neighbor persecuting her. What an evil bastard.
posted by tavella at 2:53 PM on March 30 [3 favorites]

voting while physically in jail is COMPULSORY

Noting that voting for everyone is compulsory in Australia. It's not prisoners being singled out for special treatment.
posted by Mitheral at 4:56 PM on March 31 [2 favorites]

I could welcome making voting compulsory for prisoners int the US while retaining it as voluntary for everyone else. Let's get those living in state care speaking their minds about how they feel about living in state care, and let's see if anyone else cares enough to try to overcome the effect of those votes on local elections.
posted by hippybear at 3:54 PM on April 1 [1 favorite]