Tarrant County District Attorney Phil Sorrells wants Crystal Mason’s illegal voting conviction reinstated, his office announced Thursday.
Mason, a Tarrant County resident, was acquitted of an illegal voting charge last month. Sorrells’ office is now asking the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to overturn the ruling that cleared her.
Mason was convicted of illegal voting in March 2018 and sentenced to five years in prison for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while on supervised release for federal tax evasion.
“This office will protect the ballot box from fraudsters who think our laws don’t apply to them,” Sorrells’ office said in a statement.
The office argues the Second Court of Appeals did not give proper deference to the trial court’s guilty verdict and reweighed the evidence in favor of Mason when it overturned her conviction.
Sorrells’ office adds Mason was fairly convicted based on testimony from election staff that she understood she was not eligible to vote.
Mason has maintained she did not know she was ineligible to vote.
“It is disappointing that the state has chosen to request further review of Ms. Mason’s case, but we are confident that justice will ultimately prevail,” Tommy Buser-Clancy, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas, said in a statement. “The court of appeals’ decision was well reasoned and correct. It is time to give Ms. Mason peace with her family.”
Though it had initially upheld her conviction, the Tarrant County-based Second Court of Appeals overturned it last month after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals instructed the lower court to “evaluate the sufficiency” of the evidence against Mason.
Initially, the court found that Mason’s alleged knowledge that she was on supervised release, and therefore ineligible to vote, was sufficient for an illegal voting conviction. But in instructing it to reevaluate the case, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeal ruled the lower court “erred by failing to require proof that [Mason] had actual knowledge that it was a crime for her to vote while on supervised release.”
See here for the previous update. I don’t know why the CCA would get involved here – they could have let her conviction stand in the first place. Given the way the CCA usually goes, it’s quite remarkable they ruled as they did, though by then the Lege had passed a law clarifying the situation Ms. Mason was involved in as described above. This is all political and thoroughly vile, and I hope the CCA swiftly rejects Sorrells’ motion. And then I hope Tarrant County voters take out this piece of trash in 2026.
I find your attitude vile. She canceled out the vote of another legal voter and her excuse is ridiculous. Since being children we knew that being convicted can take away your right to vote. It was on her to ensure that she was legally able to vote.
Robert, how exactly do you reconcile five years in prison because she voted in an election she shouldn’t have vs. four months for trying to stop or being intricately involved in the cessation of a peaceful transfer of presidential power/authority (navarro (in prison), mannafort (not in prison)) ? You have the same outrage over both scenarios ?
I find your ignorance vile. Here’s what casting a provisional ballot means:
“In its most basic form, a provisional ballot works like this: A voter whose name doesn’t appear on the voter registration list at a precinct polling place on Election Day—but who believes she or he is, in fact, registered—may be offered a provisional ballot. After being marked, it’s placed in a special secrecy envelope rather than in the ballot box. After the polls close, the registration status of the voter is determined. If the voter was in fact registered in that precinct on Election Day, the ballot is removed from the secrecy envelope and counted just like any other ballot. If the voter wasn’t registered, the ballot remains in the secrecy envelope and is not counted.”
So if she turns out to be ineligible, her vote doesn’t get counted. It’s supposed to be “no harm, no foul” because she’s not intending to cheat.
Now would you like to discuss the people who got caught voting more than once by filling out ballots for deceased or incapacitated relatives and how they didn’t get punished nearly so harshly? You know, actual intent to cheat?
Robert: “Since being children we knew that being convicted can take away your right to vote. ”
the “can” in that sentence is doing a lot of work.