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      I want a voice in Texas’s political future – but will my state even let us vote? | Alexandra Villarreal

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      I want a voice in Texas’s political future – but will my state even let us vote?Alexandra VillarrealWhen my partner and I moved to Austin in 2020, I faced numerous obstacles in registering to vote. There is no state where it’s harder to cast a ballot than Texas My partner and I moved to Austin from New York in the summer of 2020, when the US was in the throes of what felt like the highest-stakes election of our lifetime. As a freelance reporter for the Guardian, I wrote about voting rights and how Texas’s byzantine laws disproportionately disenfranchised Black, Latino and young voters, even as I – a Latina in my mid-20s – was registering to vote.As experts walked me through Texas’s complex web of voting restrictions for articles, I simultaneously took note of exactly what I needed to do to participate in the upcoming election. I had to be registered roughly a month before election day. Texas had no real online registration, so I would need to send my application through the US Postal Service. Well before the early October deadline, I carefully filled out and posted my voter application. Then, I waited.For weeks, my name never popped up on Texas’s searchable database of registered voters, but when I grew worried and contacted my local election office, they assured me I was good to go. I was surprised when, well after the registration deadline for the general election had passed, I received an intimidating notice signed by my county’s voter registrar saying my application had been marked incomplete because of some nebulous problem with my social security number. Distraught, I called different election authorities in Austin until someone finally told me to disregard the letter, which they said had been sent by mistake.I felt anxious. Part of me already expected more issues even before I went to the polls and a worker flagged my registration. She told me I could vote provisionally, but I wanted to be certain my vote would count, so my partner and I drove around town until we secured a printed document that irrefutably proved I was registered. Finally, after months of wading through antiquated voter registration requirements, weeks of stressful troubleshooting, and hours running around Austin, I cast my ballot.My privilege – a car, a flexible work schedule, knowledge of Texas voting laws – made it so that I could wedge my way into the democratic process. But I wondered how many other people had faced similar obstacles without the luxury to keep fighting. I also wondered why my white male partner’s experience voting in Texas for the first time had been so seamless and mine so fraught. I do not doubt that the chronic inefficiencies of the state’s electoral system may be reason enough to explain those discrepancies. But after months poring over the state’s history of racialized voter suppression, I could not dismiss a sneaking suspicion that on our application forms, the harsh, Anglo-European consonants of his surname may have attracted less scrutiny than the Spanish rolling “Rs” and soft double “Ls” in mine.Nearly two years later, I will probably never get the satisfaction of definitive answers. What I do know is that there is no other state in the country where it’s harder to cast a ballot than in Texas, and that even in 2020 – when Texans visited the polls in record numbers – we still ranked seventh lowest for voter turnout nationwide. Anyone who assumes that this lack of participation reflects a larger ambivalence among Texans commits a grave injustice; I have personally witnessed legions of us standing in hours-long lines to vote on local propositions, or marching 27 miles across central Texas in the summer heat to protest voter suppression. But because having a say here requires these herculean sacrifices of time and energy, the state has successfully bullied millions of other eligible voters into silence through lost absentee ballot applications, rejected signatures, poorly informed poll workers and any number of other hurdles inherent to the system’s design.The end result is a toxic reality where Texas politics are so far afield of the political will of most Texans that it’s hard to consider the state a democracy. A comfortable majority of registered voters in Texas oppose banning all abortions, yet that is effectively what state politicians have done in the aftermath of the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade. Polling shows overwhelming support from both Texas Democrats and Republicans for common sense gun safety measures such as universal background checks and red flag laws (a whopping 59% of Texans even want a nationwide ban on semi-automatic weapons), yet counterintuitively, state lawmakers have continually passed legislation making it easier to have a gun on hand, without training or a permit.If anything, Texas politics are trending further to the far right – and farther away from us, the people. Last month, the Republican party of Texas boggled the nation with its platform, where members called for a change to the 14th amendment that would end birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants, likened being gay to “an abnormal lifestyle choice” and opposed “all efforts to validate transgender identity”. Also on the platform, Republicans rejected the 2020 presidential election results as illegitimate, embraced a slew of voting restrictions, and advocated for repealing the 1965 Voting Rights Act, legislation that protects voters of color.In fact, Texas has long been infamous for disenfranchising its own people, so much so that for decades it was one of only nine states in their entirety – most of them former members of the Confederacy – required by the federal government to receive administrative or judicial preclearance before implementing any voting changes. Texas’s membership in this less than illustrious club of voter suppression states is thanks to the pioneering actions of former representative Barbara Jordan, Houston’s native daughter and the first Black congresswoman to represent the deep south, who in the 1970s advocated for expanding the 1965 Voting Rights Act to protect Latino and Black voters from not only racist but also linguistic discrimination.With Jordan’s institution of preclearance came an era of forced détente for Texas’s war against its people. But even with the attorney general and DC’s district court acting as watchdogs, the state’s Republican majority continued to advocate for racial gerrymandering and provisions tainted by discrimination. Then, in 2013, the supreme court’s decision in Shelby county v Holder effectively struck down preclearance across the country, allowing newly emboldened Texas politicians to declare open season on their disfavored constituents through legislation such as voter identification laws that honor handgun licenses but not student IDs.Even after Texas’s population ballooned by more than 8 million residents in the last two decades, and even though 91% of that growth was attributable to people of color, the state’s ruling party has done everything in its control to shore up white electoral power. Last year, Texas lawmakers agreed upon political maps that discriminate against Latino and Black voters to dilute their influence, rig elections for Republican incumbents and redraw districts that were becoming competitive so that Trump enthusiasts now have the upper hand. These gerrymandered maps so clearly disadvantage Texas’s majority-minority population that the US Department of Justice has sued, claiming Texas lawmakers have “refused to recognize the state’s growing minority electorate”.Meanwhile, Texas’s Republican leadership has also capitalized on the “big lie”, a conspiracy theory of mass voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election, to enact even more voting restrictions based on specious talking points around “election integrity”. Amid this latest assault on voting rights, belligerently advanced during both regular and special sessions of the Texas legislature last year, I walked the halls of my state capitol wondering how much harder it could get to cast a ballot here. Young Texans drove across the state and pulled all-nighters so they could join public testimony decrying the unconscionable damage further barriers to the polls would do. But Texas’s representatives refused to listen and instead deployed shifty procedural moves and behind-closed-door dealings to bypass public scrutiny.Even after democratic lawmakers made the bold decision to break quorum and derail last year’s voting legislation, Republicans eventually bulldozed over them to pass a new flurry of restrictions around voting hours, drive-thru voting and mail-in voting – innovations famously used by left-leaning Texas counties to more safely promote participation in the last presidential election, amid a global pandemic. With those new restrictions in effect during this year’s primaries, an Associated Press analysis revealed that more than one in eight mail-in ballots across 187 Texas counties were categorically rejected, a bleak referendum on Texas’s state of democracy.Every two to four years, national publications and pundits have made a tradition out of speculating whether this will finally be the election when Texas turns blue, or at least purple. Their perennial questions will undoubtedly re-emerge this general election, with Beto O’Rourke at the top of the Democratic ticket and with so many fundamental rights at stake.But what these buzzy analyses so often miss is the lack of agency Texans feel in regard to our own political future. We desperately want a voice in what happens to us, so much so that we willingly sacrifice sleep to testify, wear down our soles marching, and drive around town scrambling for paperwork to finally prove our equal citizenship. But as we nervously approach the front of the line at the polls, we feel a different, more visceral question tugging at our hearts and minds:Will our state even let us vote?TopicsUS voting rightsTexasUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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      ‘It’s a sham’: fears over Trump loyalists’ ‘election integrity’ drive

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      ‘It’s a sham’: fears over Trump loyalists’ ‘election integrity’ drive Roger Stone and Michael Flynn involved in ‘Operation Eagles Wings’, push to train activists in election canvassing and poll-watchingA conservative group called the America Project that boasts Donald Trump loyalists and “big lie” pushers Roger Stone and Michael Flynn as key advisers, has begun a self-styled “election integrity” drive to train activists in election canvassing and poll-watching, sparking fears from voting rights watchdogs about voter intimidation.Patrick Byrne, the multimillionaire co-founder of the America Project, has said he has donated almost $3m to launch the drive, dubbed “Operation Eagles Wings”, with a focus on eight states including Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which Trump lost, plus Texas and Florida, which he won.Mark Meadows’ associate threatened ex-White House aide before her testimonyRead moreThe drive was unveiled in late February at a press event where Byrne touted plans to educate “election reform activists” to handle election canvassing, grassroots work and fundraising “to expose shenanigans at the ballot box” in what has echoes of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged, and could become a sequel to those charges.Byrne, for instance, has said the operation’s mission is to “make sure that there are no repeats of the errors that happened in the 2020 election”, and stressed the “need to protect the voting process from election meddlers who care only about serving crooked special interest groups that neither respect nor value the rule of law”.But voting rights advocates have voiced sharp criticism of Operation Eagles Wings, calling it a “sham”, given the roles of Stone, Flynn, Byrne and others, and warning that it could lead to voter harassment at the polls and suppress legitimate votes.To lead the fledgling operation, the America Project recruited Tim Meisburger, an ex-Trump official in the US Agency for International Development: Meisburger left the agency abruptly under a cloud in mid-January 2021 after a video surfaced of him falsely informing staffers that the Capitol attack was mostly peaceful except for “a few violent people”, and that “ several million” people were demonstrating peacefully for election reforms.Overall, the America Project has boasted that its total funding is greater than $8m, including donations from Byrne, the ex-chief executive of Overstock.Byrne declined to respond to queries from the Guardian about what roles election canvassers were being trained to take on, and what the operation had done to date in its targeted states.Voting rights watchdogs say the new election integrity operation has an Orwellian quality, and poses dangers to voting rights and fair elections given the people who are so prominently associated with it.“Michael Flynn and Roger Stone have repeatedly proven themselves to be enemies of democracy,” Sean Morales-Doyle, the acting director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center, told the Guardian.He added: “While it is not clear what exactly they will ask their election reform activists to do, their claimed pursuit of “election integrity” is a sham, aimed instead at undermining public faith in our elections and setting the stage for future attempts to subvert the will of the people. The conspiracy theories they espouse would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous.”Flynn, a retired army lieutenant general who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser, and Stone, a longtime Trump confidant and self-proclaimed master of political dirty tricks, were in the vanguard of Trump loyalists promoting falsehoods about Joe Biden’s 2020 win.In mid-December 2020, for instance, Flynn suggested on the conservative network Newsmax that Trump could use the military to “rerun the elections” in several key states that Trump falsely claimed were rigged, and a few days later he attended a White House meeting with Trump, Byrne and other allies, where more wild schemes were discussed.Stone spoke at a pro-Trump rally on 5 January and the next morning was at the Willard hotel, which Trump loyalists had used as a base for plotting ways to overturn the election, accompanied by several Oath Keeper bodyguards, some of whom participated in the Capitol assault and now face criminal charges.At the rally on 5 January, Stone lavished praise on Trump’s allies who were there protesting, calling it “a historic occasion, because we’re mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it”.Flynn and Stone received pardons from Trump after they were convicted as part of the Russian 2016 election meddling investigations, including charges of lying to the FBI in Flynn’s case, and obstruction of a congressional committee in Stone’s.Not surprisingly, the Trump loyalists were subpoenaed by the House panel investigating the January 6 assault on the Capitol by hundreds of Trump supporters, but according to reports Stone and Flynn each repeatedly invoked their fifth amendment right against self-incrimination.In a video clip of a Flynn deposition that the House panel played last week, Flynn was even seen pleading the fifth when asked if he supported the lawful transfer of presidential power, and if he thought the Capitol violence was wrong.When Byrne first announced Operation Eagles Wings, Flynn and Stone were introduced as special advisers. “ If I didn’t think this had a chance to succeed I wouldn’t have gotten involved,” Stone said.There’s little doubt Byrne’s checkbook can bolster the fledgling election operation.Byrne, who falsely claimed that the 2020 election was rigged, and wrote a book entitled The Deep Rig, was the lead financier in tandem with the America Project to the tune of $3.25m of a controversial audit last year of Arizona’s largest county that Trump was banking on to prove fraud but that confirmed Biden won.The Byrne-backed Eagles Wings operation has touted plans to offer “commentary” on current election policies to ensure Americans have “access to fact-based truths about the election process”.Before launching its new operation, the America Project boasted that last year it recruited 4,500 volunteers to monitor polling stations during the gubernatorial race in Virginia where Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a former governor.In Virginia, the America Project has forged ties with Virginians for America First, a local group started by Leon Benjamin, a black pastor who in 2020 lost a race for a House seat by a whopping 23 points. Benjamin, who is running for a House seat again this fall, would not concede, citing “potential voter fraud”, in an echo of Trump’s bogus fraud claims.Last fall, Byrne and Flynn’s brother Joe, the president of the America Project, attended a fundraiser in Richmond, Virginia, for Benjamin’s group, to coincide with its release of a report calling for new curbs on voting, including ending early voting and absentee voting, and requiring voter IDs.Besides their roles with Eagles Wings, Flynn and Stone have been featured speakers along with rightwing pastors at “ReAwaken America”, which involves revival-style rallies in many states that have spread falsehoods that Trump lost due to fraud, and a distorted view of America’s separation of church and state.At a ReAwaken rally last November in Texas, Flynn claimed America should have just “one religion” – prompting heavy criticism from religious leaders and others.“If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion,” Flynn said. “One nation under God, and one religion under God, right? ”Adam Taylor, the president of the Christian social justice group Sojourners, told the Guardian that “Flynn has a warped understanding of religion and American history”.Similarly, criticism is mounting in Republican quarters about the roles of Stone and Flynn with their latest “election integrity” drive.Veteran Republican operative Charlie Black, who once was a lobbying partner of Stone’s, noted that Flynn used to have one of the highest intelligence jobs in the government, but “now he spouts conspiracy theories with no evidence to back them up. So does Roger, but he has done this for a while. Read his books for examples.”TopicsUS newsUS politicsRoger StoneMichael FlynnRepublicansUS voting rightsnewsReuse this content More

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      DoJ sues Arizona over voting law that requires proof of citizenship

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      DoJ sues Arizona over voting law that requires proof of citizenshipMeasure signed by Republican governor in March a ‘textbook violation’ of law designed to protect voters, department says The Department of Justice is challenging a new Arizona law that requires voters to provide proof of citizenship for presidential elections, among other new restrictions, saying the measure was a “textbook violation” of a federal law meant to protect voters.The challenged Arizona measure, HB 2492, was signed into law by the Republican governor, Doug Ducey, in March, requires anyone who wants to vote in a presidential election, or vote by mail in any election, to provide proof of citizenship.Next up: voting rights, as US supreme court set to tear up more protectionsRead moreThe law was among several pushed by the Arizona legislature following the 2020 election in a state where Donald Trump and his allies have spread baseless claims of fraud. Voting by mail is widely used in Arizona, a key battleground state, and Republicans in the state have made numerous attempts to make it harder to cast a ballot that way.In 2013, the supreme court ruled 7-2 in a case called Arizona v Inter Tribal Council of Arizona that the state could not require anyone who used the federal government’s voter registration application to provide proof of citizenship when they registered.As a result of that decision, there are tens of thousands of voters in Arizona who are only allowed to vote in federal elections, not state contests, because they have not provided proof of citizenship. As of March, there were roughly 31,500 federal-only voters in the state.Arizona lawmakers said that the decision only applied to congressional elections, not presidential ones, even though a lawyer for the legislature advised them the measure was probably illegal. A 1993 law, the National Voter Registration Act, requires all states to accept a federal form for voter registration – the form does not require proof of citizenship, but asks voters to attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens.“House Bill 2492’s onerous documentary proof of citizenship requirement for certain federal elections constitutes a textbook violation of the National Voter Registration Act,” Kristen Clarke, who leads the justice department’s civil rights division said on Tuesday. “Arizona is a repeat offender when it comes to attempts to make it harder to register to vote. HB 2492 is in direct with the 2013 US supreme court decision.”Some see the law as a blatant effort to get the US supreme court to reconsider its 2013 decision. The court has become significantly more conservative since then; three of the justices who were in the majority in that case – Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg – have been replaced with more conservative justices. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented in 2013, saying they believed Arizona could require proof of citizenship for those who use the federal form.The court’s new conservative majority has shown a blunt hostility to voting access, siding with state lawmakers and upholding nearly every voting restriction that has come before it in recent years.Arizona’s attorney general, Mark Brnovich, vowed on Friday that he would continue to defend the law. “Please be assured I will defend this law to the US supreme court if necessary and defeat the federal government’s efforts to interfere with our state’s election safeguards,” Brnovich, a Republican running for US Senate, wrote in a letter to Clarke.The justice department is also challenging other provisions of the Arizona law. The measure also required Arizona to add a section to its own state registration form asking voters to provide their place of birth. It also instructs election officials not to accept a voter registration form if the voter forgets to check the box indicating they are a US citizen. Those requirements violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which makes it illegal to reject someone’s voter registration if they fail to provide information that is immaterial to their eligibility to vote, Clarke said.“Checking this box is not material to establishing the voting qualifications of applicants who have already proven that they are US citizens,” she said. “That information is not material to establishing whether a voter is a US citizen because of naturalization an expatriation patterns among other reasons.”TopicsUS newsThe fight to voteArizonaUS voting rightsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Republican party building an ‘army’ to overturn election results – report

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      Republican party building an ‘army’ to overturn election results – reportAlleged scheme include installing volunteers as poll workers and getting attorneys who could intervene to block votes, Politico says The Republican party is building a grassroots “army” to target and potentially overturn election results in Democratic precincts, the Politico website reported on Wednesday, citing video evidence.The alleged scheme includes installing party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, creating a website to put these workers in touch with local lawyers and establishing a network of district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts.Many Republicans still believe Donald Trump’s lie that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden because of widespread voter fraud. At state level the party has passed laws that make it harder to vote while pro-Trump candidates are running for positions that would give them control over future elections.Politico obtained a series of recordings of Republican meetings between the summer of 2021 and May this year.It said one from November shows Matthew Seifried, the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) election integrity director for Michigan, urging party activists in Wayne county to obtain official designations as poll workers.Seifried says: “Being a poll worker, you just have so many more rights and things you can do to stop something than [as] a poll challenger.”Some of the would-be poll workers complain that fraud was committed in 2020 and that the election was “corrupt”.At another training session last October, Seifried promises support for such workers: “It’s going to be an army. We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?”Politico also obtained Zoom tapings of Tim Griffin, legal counsel to the Amistad Project, a self-described election integrity group that Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani once portrayed as a “partner” in the Trump campaign’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election.Griffin is seen meeting with activists from multiple states and discussing plans for identifying friendly district attorneys who could stage interventions in local election disputes.He says during one meeting in September: “Remember, guys, we’re trying to build out a nationwide district attorney network. Your local district attorney, as we always say, is more powerful than your congressman.“They’re the ones that can seat a grand jury. They’re the ones that can start an investigation, issue subpoenas, make sure that records are retained, etc.”Politico added that installing party loyalists on the board of canvassers, which is responsible for certifying election results, also appears to be part of the Republican strategy.The revelations are sure to intensify concerns about fresh assaults on American democracy in 2022 and 2024.Nick Penniman, founder and chief executive of Issue One, an election watchdog group, told Politico: “This is completely unprecedented in the history of American elections – that a political party would be working at this granular level to put a network together. It looks like now the Trump forces are going directly after the legal system itself, and that should concern everyone.”The RNC insisted that it is simply trying to restore balance to election oversight in heavily Democratic cities such as Detroit. Gates McGavick, an RNC spokesperson, was quoted as saying: “Democrats have had a monopoly on poll watching for 40 years, and it speaks volumes that they’re terrified of an even playing field.“The RNC is focused on training volunteers to take part in the election process because polling shows that American voters want bipartisan poll-watching to ensure transparency and security at the ballot box.”TopicsRepublicansUS elections 2024US politicsUS voting rightsnewsReuse this content More

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      Crystal Mason on a ruling that could change her life: 'I know this is not over’ | The fight to vote

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      Crystal Mason on a ruling that could change her life: ‘I know this is not over’ A court in Texas must reconsider its decision to sentence Mason to five years for a voting error – how does she feel?Hello Fight to Vote readers,Every Tuesday night for the last year or so, Crystal Mason has had trouble sleeping.On Wednesday mornings, the Texas court of criminal appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, usually issues its ruling. And since March of last year, Mason has been waiting for a ruling from the court that could change her life. She’s been appealing a five-year prison sentence for voting a provisional ballot in 2016. Mason was ineligible to vote at the time because she was on federal supervised release – which is like probation – for a tax felony. Texas prohibits anyone from voting while they are serving a criminal sentence, but she says – and probation officials have confirmed – that no one told her she was ineligible.Yesterday, Mason, who is 47-years-old and raised seven kids and has six grandchildren, got the phone call she’s been anxiously waiting for. In an 8-1 ruling, the court told a lower court it had to reconsider the case to determine whether Mason actually knew she was ineligible to vote when she cast a ballot. It was a partial, but far from final, victory for Mason.I’ve been following Mason’s case for the last few years, and on Wednesday, I spoke with Mason hours after the ruling. We talked about about her case and why she thinks it’s struck a nerve across the US.How are you feeling, and what was it like to get the news this morning?I was at work and Kim [Mason’s lawyer] called me … She said the decision came in. I just started to panic, I started to sweat, like nervous, like, ‘What’s going on, Kim?’She let me know that it’s going back to the second court of appeals and they have to prove intent. Like where I really knew that I was committing a crime. And I feel like that’s a good step. That’s a good step right there.If you go off facts and facts alone, Sam, you know that the supervised release officer testified on the stand and said no one told me [I couldn’t vote] in the supervised release office. Then I received paperwork in my judgment and commitment, and in black and white, it’s not there. And then you can see it in my supervised release information, it was not there.Texas court ordered to reconsider decision to uphold prison sentence for woman who votedRead moreI think that the criminal court of appeals asked them something very important. That needs to be … that’s the whole case, right there. I’m very happy that they did that. But I know this is not over.You were never told, never had any idea, being on federal supervised release, that you couldn’t vote in Texas?Absolutely not. I was never told that. I never had any paperwork stating that. I was going by all my conditions of being on supervised release, and I did not see that at all. I do know that as a felon you still have the right to vote. I had no idea that being on supervised release took that right away from me.There’s no way … I’m on track. I got a good job. I’m making decent money. I’m in school. I’m back with my family, my kids, my grandbabies. You wouldn’t have ever taken a chance, if there was even a grey line, of me thinking that I was ineligible to vote. I just wouldn’t have did that. You just don’t.This has been a disaster for me. The jobs that I have lost. Me going back to prison [Mason was ordered to return to federal prison for 10 months for being convicted of a crime while on supervised release], leaving my kids. Me fighting to try to maintain everything. It’s been a disaster for me.There have been very significant consequences for you and your family. Can you walk me through what some of those consequences have been?I had to go back to prison. I had three jobs taken away from me. I fought to maintain my house and everything. And I am the provider for my family.You were not a political person in 2016.Not at all.And since then you’ve become political. Can you tell me a little bit about what you’ve been doing and what made you get more politically active?If you go back to my first interviews, you’ll hear me say ‘I’ll never vote again. I’ll never vote again.’ And that was it. And I realized that’s exactly what they wanted me to do. That’s exactly what they wanted me to say.I realized that no, I have to let everybody know that what I had done was an innocent mistake. And I am being prosecuted for an innocent mistake and that is not right. And then I had to let everybody know how important it is to go vote. Because the people that did this to me – the judge, the DA, the prosecutor – they’re all elected officials. So this is the reason why it’s so important that we get out and vote.And what has your group, Crystal Mason ‘The Fight’, been focused on? Has it been teaching people about their rights eligibility? Encouraging them to vote? All of the above?All of the above. Educating them on the different types of ballot. We’re getting ready to do a town hall. And that’s where we’re asking different candidates running for different positions to come to my venue and speak to the community. And let us know: who you are and what do you plan on doing if you get the seat you’re running for.I’ve traveled across the country, and almost everywhere I go, people have heard of that woman in Texas who was sentenced to five years in prison for trying to vote. I’m curious why you think your case has resonated so much and caused so much outrage?I think the people see the wrongness. The people that’s in the court system, the people that’s in a position to do something about it has turned a blind eye on it. I feel that people who hear the story and just really see, they know that I did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong. Nothing at all.I filled out a provisional ballot. I’m being sentenced for illegally voting and I never voted. I mean that’s wrong right there.There are some people who have said your case is an example of intimidation. Sending a message to Black people, and people who have felony convictions in their past, that you better be really sure you can vote before you try. Do you see it as intimidation? Have you heard from other people who are not going to vote because they heard about what’s happened to you?I have heard that. That’s because people are scared. They’re listening to me, and I tell them ‘yep, I’m right here but I’m fighting and it’s very wrong.’ But people don’t want to take a chance.And yes, I do feel like my case is sending a message to the Black and the brown [people]: ‘If you dare come to the polls, this could happen to you’. So yes, I do feel like it’s sending a message. It is a scare tactic. And that’s not right, that’s not right at all. So that’s the reason I’m out here speaking to people and telling people how important it is to vote.And actually you voted in the primary, a couple months ago [Mason’s supervised release expired last year, allowing her to vote in Texas]. What was that like for you to go back to the voting booth and cast a ballot when you were eligible?It was very exciting. I was with my family, and the things that I didn’t know [before], I knew. So once I finished up with my ballot, I automatically went to go help my mother. And of course I got stopped and they said, ‘Oh no, you can’t.’I told her … I can help her. I had to fill out a form, and they notarized it and everything. I turned around and I went to help my mom and I helped my niece. So I felt real good about being knowledgable about being able to help them through that ballot.Is there anything you hope people take away from your case? What do you hope people will learn from your case and take away from it.The importance of voting. Everybody that has something to do with my case are elected officials.TopicsUS newsFight to voteTexasUS politicsUS voting rightsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Texas court ordered to reconsider decision to uphold prison sentence for woman who voted

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      Texas court ordered to reconsider decision to uphold prison sentence for woman who votedCrystal Mason was sentenced to five years in prison for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election A Texas appeals court must reconsider its decision to uphold a five-year conviction for Crystal Mason, the Texas woman sentenced to prison for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election, the state’s highest criminal court ruled on Wednesday.My day with Pamela Moses after her charges were dropped | The fight to voteRead moreMason showed up to the polls to vote in 2016, while on supervised release – which is similar to probation – for a federal tax felony. She cast a provisional ballot at the urging of election workers, which was ultimately rejected because people with felony convictions in Texas cannot vote while they are serving any part of a federal sentence.Mason said she had no idea she was ineligible to vote, and an official from the federal probation office testified at her trial that they never informed her she was ineligible. “That’s just not something we do. In my opinion, that’s common knowledge, but that’s not something we do,” the official said during her trial.A local judge in Tarrant county, where Mason lives, convicted her of illegally voting in 2018 and sentenced her to five years in prison. An appeals court upheld that ruling in 2020.The Texas court of criminal appeals said the an appellate court had “erred by failing to require proof that the appellant had actual knowledge that it was a crime for her to vote while on supervised release”.Mason has remained out of prison on an appeal bond during that time. Her appeal to the Texas court of criminal appeals, Texas’s highest criminal court, was her last chance.“I am pleased that the court acknowledged issues with my conviction, and am ready to defend myself against these cruel charges,” Mason said in a statement. “My life has been upended for what was, at worst, an innocent misunderstanding of casting a provisional ballot that was never even counted. I have been called to this fight for voting rights and will continue to serve my community.”Anna Tinsley Williams, a spokeswoman for Tarrant County district attorney Sharen Wilson, declined to comment on the ruling because it was a pending case.The case attracted significant national attention because of the severity of Mason’s sentence. It’s one of a string of cases in which Black defendants have faced harsh punishments for voting errors, in what many see as an obvious effort to intimidate Black voters. There is no comprehensive data comparing punishment for voting crimes by race.Even though Mason will remain out of prison, the case has already taken a significant toll on her life. She lost her job after she was indicted for illegally voting, and was sent back to federal prison for several months for being charged with a crime on supervised release. She nearly lost her home to foreclosure during that time as her teenage children stepped in to run the household.In recent years, she has become much more politically active, encouraging people to vote and learn about their eligibility if they have a felony conviction. She introduced Beto O’Rourke onstage in March when he formally earned the Democratic nomination for Texas governor.During her trial, prosecutors argued Mason knew she was ineligible to vote because witnesses testified that she read and signed an affidavit on the provisional ballot stating the voting eligibility requirements. And when the second court of appeals upheld her sentence in 2020, the court said the fact that Mason didn’t know she was ineligible was “irrelevant to her prosecution”. All prosecutors needed to prove was that she knew she was on federal supervised release, Judge Wade Birdwell wrote for the court.The Texas court of appeals said Wednesday that interpretation of the law was incorrect and “would lead to absurd consequences that the legislature could not possibly have intended”.“The state was required to prove not only that Appellant knew she was on supervised release but also that she ‘actually realized’ that ‘these circumstances … in fact’ rendered her ineligible to vote,” Judge Jesse McClure III, wrote for the 8-1 majority.“The court of criminal appeals clarifying that innocent mistakes cannot be the basis for prosecution is critical,” said Thomas Buser-Clancy, a lawyer with the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who is helping represent Mason. “We are hopeful that holding, as we go back to the lower court, will ensure that what was at worst an innocent mistake for Ms. Mason will lead to overturning her conviction.”The court rejected two other arguments offered by Mason’s lawyers in the appeal. They disagreed with an argument that because Mason’s ballot was rejected, she did not actually “vote” under the law. They also rejected an argument that her conviction should be overturned because federal law guarantees her the right to vote a provisional ballot. There were nearly 4,000 provisional ballots rejected in Tarrant county in the 2016 election. Mason appears to be the only person among them who was prosecuted.In a dissenting opinion, Judge Michelle Slaughter wrote that there was enough evidence that Mason knew she was ineligible to vote to convict her. After her federal conviction, she noted, the local election office sent two notices to her home address telling her she was ineligible to vote. Even though Mason was in federal prison at that time, Slaughter said, it was reasonable to infer Mason’s family either forwarded her the letter or that she read them when she returned home years later. (Mason has said she never saw the notices.) She also said the fact that Mason signed the provisional affidavit only corroborated that she knew she was ineligible.TopicsTexasThe fight to voteUS politicsUS voting rightsnewsReuse this content More

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      Georgia sees first major test for a Republican defending democracy | The fight to vote

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      Georgia sees first major test for a Republican defending democracyThe most important primary in the US might be the Georgia secretary of state race, where Brad Raffensperger is in a tough re-election battle after standing up to Trump Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterHello, and Happy Thursday,I’m writing from Atlanta, where I’m spending this week reporting on the Republican primary for secretary of state.This race is perhaps the most important primary happening in America this year. Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s incumbent secretary of state, is in a really tough re-election battle after memorably standing up to Donald Trump in 2020 and refusing his request to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the election 2020 results. The former president is backing Jody Hice, a conservative congressman who has embraced the myth the election was stolen in a bid to oust Raffensperger.It’s the first major test we’re seeing this year of whether a Republican who defends democracy can withstand the wrath of his own party. It’s also a major test for democracy both in Georgia and the US – one of several closely watched races this year in which candidates who have expressed willingness to overturn an election are seeking to be the chief election officials in their state.I spent Monday morning in a conference room at the headquarters of Georgia Public Broadcasting, watching a live stream of Raffensperger, Hice and two other candidates – David Belle Isle and TJ Hudson – debate downstairs (reporters were not allowed in the room). Nearly the entire hour was about the 2020 election, with the other three candidates repeating baseless and debunked claims of fraud. The first question Hice was asked was why voters should trust his judgment if he continues to believe the election was stolen. He dodged.“The big lie in all of this is that there were no problems in this last election. This last election was filled with problems,” Hice said. “Election security must be protected and Brad Raffensperger let that ball majorly fall.”Afterwards, I asked Hice something I’ve been asking almost everyone I meet who believes the 2020 election was stolen: is there anything he could see that could convince him that it was accurate. The election results in Georgia have been confirmed through multiple audits and recounts.“Not at this point, there’s nothing,” he said, going on to reference an allegation of illegal ballot harvesting from a conservative group that Raffensperger’s office is currently investigating. “This election was just overwhelmed with fraudulent activity. There’s nothing that can change my opinion of that.”I also asked Hice if he thought Trump’s call to Raffensperger was appropriate. If he was elected, what would he do if a president from his own party called him up and asked him to find votes for him?“Absolutely, there was nothing wrong with that request,” Hice said. “He was not saying go out and ‘find illegal ballots for me’. He was saying look at all the fraud that’s out here. Do your job. Make sure we have legal ballots that are cast, legal ballots that are counted, and had Brad done so, I believe the outcome would have been different.”But the January 2021 call from Trump to Raffensperger was not just a generalized call to investigate suspicious activity. As Trump and his team listed what they saw as irregularities, Raffensperger and his staff said that they were either investigating them or had debunked them. Trump made it clear that he wanted the outcome to be a reversal of the election results. “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state,” he said.During the debate, Raffensperger pushed back on Hice by repeatedly describing him as a liar while also trying to burnish his own conservative credentials. He repeatedly touted his focus on preventing non-citizen voting – which is virtually non-existent. He said he would be in favor of getting rid of a federal prohibition on giant voter removals within 90 days of an election. And he said he supported getting rid of no-excuse mail-in voting in Georgia. In any other race, all of those would be controversial positions on their own. During the debate on Monday, they seemed moderate in comparison with those of Hice, who refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the 2020 election.At one point during the debate, Raffensperger, a former engineer who is soft-spoken and sometimes speaks awkwardly, seemed exasperated. He detailed how his office had played a kind of Whac-A-Mole after the 2020 election, debunking claims about felon voting, underage voting and dead people voting.“The real problem that you have gets down to basic honesty,” he said. “It gets down to, it was actual, total, disinformation, misinformation, outright lying. And there’s not much I can do about that, because Jody Hice has been running from one rumor to another for the last 18 months. And how can you have confidence when people that should be holding a responsible position as a sitting congressman should be telling the truth.”Also worth watching …
      Georgia’s department of driver services quietly eliminated automatic voter registration on its website, but has since restored it.
      A decision striking down New York’s congressional map is a major blow to Democratic efforts to keep control of the US House this year
      Mississippi’s governor vetoed a bill that would make it moderately easier for people with felony convictions to get their voting rights back.
      TopicsGeorgiaFight to voteRepublicansUS politicsUS voting rightsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      My day with Pamela Moses after her charges were dropped | The fight to vote

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      ‘I’m like Rocky’: my day with Pamela Moses after her charges were droppedAfter prosecutors dropped criminal charges against Moses for trying to register to vote, I met her in person – and learned what’s next now that her case is over Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterHello, and Happy Thursday,I’ve been closely following the criminal case against Pamela Moses, who was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register to vote, for the last few months. But on Monday I met her in person for the first time.We were meeting just days after prosecutors announced they were dropping criminal charges against her, cancelling a scheduled court appearance where she was set to find out if they would retry her case. Even so, Moses insisted that she take me to visit the hulking criminal courthouse in downtown Memphis, a building simply known by its address, 201 Poplar.We went through security and walked downstairs into one of the courthouse’s main waiting areas, where electronic screens on the wall showed defendant names and where they stood on court dockets for the day. It was mostly empty, but on a normal day, Moses said, it’s crowded with Black people waiting to get their cases heard. She walked past a line of people waiting at a clerk’s office and asked a teller if a judge she knew was still around – he wasn’t.We took the elevator up to the seventh floor, which houses the courtroom where Moses’ case took place. When the doors opened, a sheriff’s deputy beamed, gave her a hug, and congratulated her on beating the case. “This man tried to kill me the first time he met me,” Moses said, laughing. She would later tell me he was one of the officers who took her into custody when the bail in her voting case was abruptly revoked in December. Now, she said, they were cool with each other.Back downstairs we ran into Kenneth Brashier, a lawyer Moses has known for a long time. He was beaming too and congratulated her. “Usually you have a cigar when you take a victory lap,” he told her. Moses said she’d take a victory lap once she changed Tennessee’s law around felon disenfranchisement.It was raining, so Moses and I spent the rest of the day driving around Memphis in her car. Waiting to pick up her son Taj from school, we talked about the case of Crystal Mason, the Texas woman appealing a five-year prison sentence for casting a provisional ballot while ineligible in 2016. Moses was stunned to learn Mason’s vote wasn’t even counted.She walked me through several of the criminal and other legal cases she’s been involved in, rattling off an encyclopedic knowledge of judges, lawyers, and other county officials. She’s outspoken and embraces her reputation as a bit of a troublemaker. “I’m like Rocky Balboa,” she said at one point with a laugh. When I asked her what would come next for her now that the voting case was over, she didn’t miss a beat. “I’m working on getting a man of out of prison who’s been there for 25 years,” she said. In her yard, she still has a sign up from her long shot 2019 mayoral campaign. It was that effort that prompted election officials to start investigating her voting eligibility.Earlier that morning, Moses had held a press conference at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine motel, where Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. It was the first time Moses had spoken about her case since the charges were dropped. Taj, 13, a tech whiz, helped set up two iPhones to stream the press conference. “I am so lucky to be here with my mom because I am blessed. Other children are not as fortunate as me to have their parents released and have their charges dropped,” he said.Moses said Tennessee should get rid of the form that people with felonies have to fill out if they want to vote, the document at the center of her case. Tennessee has one of the most confusing and harshest felon disenfranchisement policies in the country – more than 450,000 people, including more than 20% of the Black voting age population, can’t vote because of a felony conviction, according to an estimate by the Sentencing Project. She told me she saw her case as an effort to intimidate Black voters.“When it comes to Black people in the south, whatever we do, if it’s wrong, you’ve got to pay for it,” she said. “If there was a white person and I got treated the way I did, I would be just as upset, but you don’t see white people getting treated like that.”Moses also rebuked Amy Weirich, the district attorney who prosecuted the case. Weirich put out a statement on Friday suggesting Moses bore responsibility for her long sentence because she did not take a plea deal. Moses said the statement showed how the prosecutor was determined to get a conviction: “It showed who she is: arrogant, wants to be right. I think it just sounded like she wanted to win.” A Weirich spokesman declined an interview request.Moses urged people to vote in the Democratic primary for district attorney, which is going on right now (two of the candidates, Linda Harris and Janika White, watched from the audience). Afterwards, during a lunch at a barbecue restaurant across the street, Moses encouraged other Tennessee voters to talk to Harris.At the press conference that morning, she mentioned that she had considered committing suicide while she was in jail last year. Later she told me it was connected to the shock of being abruptly taken into custody.“Going to jail is not a bad thing for somebody who’s been before. It’s a bad thing when you’re not expecting it,” she said.Snacking on a steady stream of Jolly Ranchers from her front cupholder as we drove around that afternoon, she pointed out what she sees as deep inequalities in Memphis. Near Graceland, we drove by what looked like a busy voting precinct. People vote there, she said, because there’s money and tourism. Further down the road, Moses pointed out the neighborhood had changed: many of the buildings were abandoned, a consequence, she said, of white flight.“There’s so many things wrong in Memphis,” Moses said. “How dare you waste our tax dollars, waste our time, waste our manpower, how dare you do that? That’s what most people can agree on.”Also worth watching …
      Florida Republicans approved a congressional map that severely blunts Black political power in the state. There is already a legal challenge to the plan.
      The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, approved a new law that creates a statewide office to investigate election crimes and imposes other new restrictions.
      New York’s highest court struck down the state’s congressional map, saying it was too severely distorted to benefit Democrats.
      TopicsUS voting rightsFight to voteMemphisUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More