A woman convicted in Texas of fraudulent voting for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election will get a hearing before the state court of appeals, her last opportunity to avoid a five year prison sentence, NBC News reports.
Convicted in 2011 of tax fraud, Crystal Mason went to the polls in November 2016 to vote in the election when she was still on supervised release. When she found she was not on the voter rolls, she voted via provisional ballot with the help of a poll worker.
The statement a person signs when casting a provisional ballot in Texas specifies that the voter has completed any applicable felony sentence, including supervised release. Mason testified in her original trial that she did not know she was ineligible to vote because she hadn’t read the fine print when the poll worker was helping her fill out the paperwork for the provisional ballot.
Texas election workers flagged Mason’s provisional ballot and authorities charged her with knowingly voting illegally. Mason’s lawyers, including representatives from the ACLU, have said that Mason did not know she was ineligible and that because her provisional ballot was excluded, the system worked and her vote was moot.