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      Black Woman’s Bid to Regain Voting Rights Ends With a 6-Year Prison Sentence

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      Missteps by various officials put a Tennessee woman on a collision course with the law. Supporters say the sentence underscores racial disparities in voter fraud cases.A Black woman who was sentenced last week to six years and one day in prison for trying to register to vote in 2019 despite having a felony conviction says she was the victim of complicated voting laws in Tennessee that appeared to confuse even election officials.Prosecutors in Memphis said that accidentally or not, the woman, Pamela Moses, 44, broke the law. But Ms. Moses, a Black Lives Matter activist, and her lawyer say election officials gave her advice that they later corrected while she was seeking to have her voting rights restored.Voting rights activists say Ms. Moses’ lengthy sentence underscores racial disparities in the criminal justice system when it comes to voting fraud cases — especially since white men who have been charged in more straightforward instances of voting fraud have received probation or just days of imprisonment.Ms. Moses’ collision course with the justice system began when she decided she wanted to run for mayor of Memphis in the summer of 2019.Local election officials told Ms. Moses then that she could not be on the ballot because of prior felony convictions, including a 2015 conviction for tampering with evidence. That felony conviction meant Ms. Moses would never be allowed to vote again, but officials did not tell her that at the time and advised her only to check her probation status, said Bede Anyanwu, her lawyer.Ms. Moses was confused because she thought her probation was over, Mr. Anyanwu said. She still wanted to run for mayor, or at the very least vote in the upcoming election, so she went to find answers.In September 2019, a judge told Ms. Moses that she was indeed still on probation. She remained skeptical and went to the probation office, where a probation officer told her she was actually done with her felony probation, records show. The probation officer signed off on her voting rights restoration form. Ms. Moses submitted the form to election officials.Problems came one day later. The probation officer had made a mistake, and the Department of Correction sent a letter to the Shelby County Election Commission informing it that Ms. Moses was “still under an active felony sentence” and could not vote, records show.Ms. Moses was then charged with perjury on a registration form and consenting to a false entry on official election documents. The former charge was dropped, because there was no false statement from Ms. Moses on the voting form, but she was convicted of the second charge in November and sentenced Jan. 31 to six years and one day in prison.“This is a vendetta-type prosecution,” Mr. Anyanwu said on Monday. He added that Judge W. Mark Ward of Criminal Court had “acted like a bully and slammed her” with a lengthy sentence.Video of the hearing shows Ms. Moses telling Judge Ward, “All I did was try to get my rights to vote back the way the people at the election commission told me.”Judge Ward responded, “You tricked the probation department into giving you a document saying that you were off probation.”Judge Ward said in an email that he could not comment because the case was pending.Ms. Moses is currently in jail and could not be reached for comment, but she told WREG, a Memphis TV news station, in December that she “relied on the election commission because those are the people who were supposed to know what you know you’re supposed to do.”“And I found out that they didn’t know,” she said.Judge Ward said in his sentencing order that Ms. Moses seemed “to have nothing but contempt for the law and acts as though she believes herself above the law.”“Perhaps some time in custody will serve as a period of reflection that will give the defendant the insight she needs in order to be fully rehabilitated,” Judge Ward wrote. He added that he would consider placing her on probation after nine months.Amy Weirich, the Shelby County district attorney, did not respond to several calls and emails seeking an interview, but she said in a news release that Ms. Moses had 16 prior criminal convictions, including misdemeanor counts from 2015 of perjury, stalking and theft under $500.In the hearing, Ms. Moses said that she did not commit those crimes and pleaded guilty only to avoid jail time, according to the judge’s sentencing order. Mr. Anyanwu said she was also struggling financially at the time and could not afford to pay for a lawyer.Ms. Moses voted in at least six elections between 2015 and 2018, after she had been convicted of a felony, according to the sentencing orderBecause Ms. Moses was registered to vote before being convicted of a felony in 2015, a court clerk was supposed to notify election officials, who would remove her from voting rolls after the convictions.But that did not happen, according to a letter sent by the Shelby County Election Commission to Ms. Weirich, the district attorney, on Aug. 8, 2020. The letter shows that election officials acknowledged the error, writing that the conviction notice for Ms. Moses “was not sent to the election commission by the court.”Under Tennessee law, people convicted of certain felonies, including tampering with evidence, lose their voting rights forever, a measure that has drawn criticism from voting rights activists.“Instead of welcoming people in, we are perpetually shutting them out, making it harder to vote, and in this instance, criminalizing their efforts to become active and civically engaged members of our society,” Janai Nelson, the associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said on Monday.Blair Bowie, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center who has been assisting Ms. Moses and Mr. Anyanwu with the case since October, said on Monday that Tennessee’s complex voting laws had a “disparate impact on Black people.” The NAACP Legal Defense Fund echoed that sentiment, saying on Twitter that “there are two criminal justice systems in America.”In October, Donald Kirk Hartle, a white Republican voter, was charged with two counts of voter fraud in Las Vegas after he forged his dead wife’s signature to vote with her ballot. He was sentenced in November to one year of probation, The Reno Gazette Journal reported.Edward Snodgrass, a white Republican official in Ohio, forged his dead father’s signature on an absentee ballot in 2020 and was charged with illegal voting, NBC News reported. As part of a plea agreement, he served three days in jail last year, The Delaware Gazette reported.Ms. Nelson compared Ms. Moses’ case to the cases of Hervis Rogers of Houston, a 62-year-old Black man who was charged with voting illegally while he was still on parole and faced up to 40 years in prison, and Crystal Mason, a Black woman in Tarrant County, Texas, who was sentenced to five years in prison for illegal voting, despite insisting that she did not know she was ineligible to vote as a felon on probation.Mr. Anyanwu said Ms. Moses planned to appeal the judge’s sentencing.Judge Ward said in his order that Ms. Moses should have listened to the first judge who told her in 2019 that she was indeed still on probation.Mr. Anyanwu disagreed.“It was the probation department that gave the letter that she had expired her sentence, so she’ll be prosecuted for a mistake that was made by the state,” he said. More

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      The Voter Fraud Fraud

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      It was March 3, 2020, the day of the Democratic primary in Texas, and Hervis Rogers, a 62-year-old Black man, was intent on making his voice heard at the ballot box. He arrived at the polling place around 7 p.m. and joined the line. More

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      Her Ballot Didn’t Count. She Faces 5 Years in Prison for Casting It.

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      A Texas woman is appealing her conviction of voting illegally in the 2016 election. A lawyer says her prosecution “guts the entire purpose of the provisional ballot system.”On Election Day 2016, Crystal Mason went to vote after her mother insisted that she make her voice heard in the presidential election. When her name didn’t appear on official voting rolls at her polling place in Tarrant County, Texas, she filled out a provisional ballot, not thinking anything of it.Ms. Mason’s ballot was never officially counted or tallied because she was ineligible to vote: She was on supervised release after serving five years for tax fraud. Nonetheless, that ballot has wrangled her into a lengthy appeals process after a state district court sentenced her to five years in prison for illegal voting, as she was a felon on probation when she cast her ballot.Ms. Mason maintains that she didn’t know she was ineligible to vote.“This is very overwhelming, waking up every day knowing that prison is on the line, trying to maintain a smile on your face in front of your kids and you don’t know the outcome,” Ms. Mason said in a phone interview. “Your future is in someone else’s hands because of a simple error.”Her case is now headed for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest state court for criminal cases, whose judges said on Wednesday that they had decided to hear it. Ms. Mason unsuccessfully asked for a new trial and lost her case in an appellate court.This new appeal is the last chance for Ms. Mason, 46, who is out on appeal bond, to avoid prison. If her case has to advance to the federal court system, Ms. Mason would have to appeal from a cell.Alison Grinter, one of Ms. Mason’s lawyers, said the federal government made it clear in the Help America Vote Act of 2002 that provisional ballots should not be criminalized because they represent “an offer to vote — they’re not a vote in themselves.”She said that Ms. Mason didn’t know she was ineligible and was still convicted, and that Texas’ election laws stipulate that a person must knowingly vote illegally to be guilty of a crime.“Crystal never wanted to be a voting rights advocate,” Ms. Grinter said Thursday. “She didn’t want to be a political football here. She just wanted to be a mom and a grandmother and put her life on track, but she’s really taken it and run with it, and she refuses to be intimidated.”A Tarrant County grand jury indicted Ms. Mason for a violation of the Texas election laws, a spokeswoman for the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.“Our office offered Mason the option of probation in this case, which she refused,” the statement said. “Mason waived a trial by jury and chose to proceed to trial before the trial judge.”In March 2018, Judge Ruben Gonzalez of Texas’ 432nd District Court found Ms. Mason guilty of a second-degree felony for illegally voting.According to Tommy Buser-Clancy, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, Ms. Mason should never have never been convicted. If there is ambiguity in someone’s eligibility, the provisional ballot system is there to account for it, he said.“That’s very scary,” he said of Ms. Mason’s conviction, “and it guts the entire purpose of the provisional ballot system.”If her eligibility was incorrect, he said, “that should be the end of the story.”The appeals court’s decision could set an important precedent for the future of how the public interprets voting, especially if they’re confused, according to Joseph R. Fishkin, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He said he hoped that the court establishes a principle not to “criminalize people for being confused about the complexities of the interaction between the criminal law and election law.”Professor Fishkin said that he and many other law experts believe that if the court upholds Ms. Mason’s conviction, the state would be in direct conflict with the federal Help America Vote Act.“It’s very important for basic fairness and for participation around the country that people are confident that when they act in good faith and aren’t trying to pull a fast one, that you’re not going to start charging them for crimes,” Professor Fishkin said Thursday. “If this case stands, that’s obviously concerning, because a lot of people who may not understand the details of their status or who is allowed to vote will be deterred from voting.”Across the United States, 5.2 million Americans cannot vote because of a prior felony conviction, according to the Sentencing Project, a research organization dedicated to crime and punishment.The office of the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, said that 531 election fraud offenses have been prosecuted since 2004. The outcomes of those cases were not immediately available. At least 72 percent of Mr. Paxton’s voter fraud cases have targeted people of color, according to The Houston Chronicle.Ms. Mason’s cause has received support from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Clark Neily, a senior vice president for criminal justice at the institute, said the case represented an example of excessive criminalization.“It’s putting people in a position where they can commit a criminal offense without even knowing that they’re in violation of any law,” he said.Celina Stewart, chief counsel at the League of Women Voters, which has filed supporting briefs on Ms. Mason’s behalf, said her case sent “a very clear message” that people with felony convictions should be cautious.“She’s being made an example, and the example is that you don’t want returning citizens, Black people, Black women to vote,” she said. “That’s an egregious narrative, and we have to push back on that because that’s not how democracy works.” More

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      Biden to Sign Order Meant to Make Voting Easier

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBiden to Sign Order Meant to Make Voting EasierThe executive order is relatively limited in scope. It calls upon officials at federal agencies to study and potentially expand access to voter registration materials.President Biden at the White House on Saturday.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMarch 7, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — President Biden is expected to sign an executive order on Sunday that directs the government to take steps to make voting easier, marking the 56th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Ala., which swiftly turned voting rights into a national cause.The multipart order is aimed at using the far-flung reach of federal agencies to help people register to vote and to encourage Americans to go to the polls on Election Day. In a prepared speech for the Martin and Coretta King Unity Breakfast on Sunday, Mr. Biden will argue that such actions are still necessary despite the progress of the last half-century.“The legacy of the march in Selma is that while nothing can stop a free people from exercising their most sacred power as citizens, there are those who will do everything they can to take that power away,” Mr. Biden will say, according to the prepared remarks.“Every eligible voter should be able to vote and have it counted,” he plans to say. “If you have the best ideas, you have nothing to hide. Let more people vote.”The president’s actions come in the wake of his predecessor’s monthslong assault on the voting process during the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 riot that erupted at the U.S. Capitol after that predecessor, Donald J. Trump, repeatedly sought to overturn the election results.The executive order is relatively limited in scope. It calls upon officials at federal agencies to study and potentially expand access to voter registration materials, especially for those with disabilities, incarcerated people and other historically underserved groups.It also orders a modernization of the federally run Vote.gov website to ensure that it provides the most up-to-date information about voting and elections.But the order does not directly address efforts by many Republican-led state legislatures to restrict voting, including measures that would roll back the mail voting that was established in many states during the pandemic.Mr. Biden has said that he supports H.R. 1, a far-reaching voter rights bill that passed the House last week. It would weaken restrictive state voter identification laws, require automatic voter registration, expand mail-in voting and early voting, make it more difficult to eliminate voters from the rolls and restore voting rights to former felons.That legislation faces a difficult challenge in the evenly divided Senate, where Republican opposition appears to make it highly unlikely that it can win the support of the 60 senators required to send it to Mr. Biden’s desk.In the meantime, a senior administration official said Mr. Biden’s executive order was meant to show that the president was doing what he could.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More