Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation (WP) [View all]

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/03/30/texas-woman-sentenced-to-5-years-in-prison-for-voting-while-on-probation/

Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation
by Meagan Flynn | March 30 at 6:01 AM


Crystal Mason (Tarrant County Jail)

If she had known it was illegal, Crystal Mason said she would have never cast a vote in the 2016 presidential election.

The 43-year-old former tax preparer hadn’t even planned on voting until her mother encouraged her to do it. She had only recently been released from federal prison for a 2012 tax fraud conviction, in which she pleaded guilty to inflating returns for her clients, her attorney, J. Warren St. John, told The Washington Post.

She was still on community supervision at the time of the election — but no one, including her probation officer, St. John said, ever told her that being a felon on supervision meant she couldn’t vote under Texas law.

The case is yet another illustration of Texas’s zealous crackdown on voter fraud, a problem that state GOP leaders have described as “rampant” in the past but for which they have yet to provide hard proof, save for isolated cases such as Mason’s.

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Meanwhile:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/steve-curtis-former-colorado-gop-chairman-sentenced-for-voter-fraud/

January 27, 2018, 10:11 PM
Former Colorado GOP chairman sentenced for voter fraud

GREELEY, Colo. -- The former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party was sentenced to four years of probation and 300 hours of community service for voter fraud. Steve Curtis blamed a "major diabetic episode" for causing him to vote his ex-wife's absentee ballot in October 2016.