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March 30, 2018

Texas Woman Sentenced to 5 Years for Voting While on Probation
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In Texas, a judge sentenced a woman from the Dallas-Fort Worth area to
five years in prison Wednesday on charges of illegally voting, after she
cast a ballot in the 2016 presidential election. Crystal Mason, who's
African-American, said she cast a provisional ballot in good faith after
she arrived at her usual polling place and was told her name was not on
the rolls. Mason was on supervised release from a 2011 felony fraud
conviction at the time, making her ineligible to vote under Texas state
law. She was sentenced to five years in prison by state District Judge
Ruben Gonzalez after she waived her right to a jury trial. According to
the Sentencing Project, almost a half-million Texans were
disenfranchised in 2016 due to felony convictions.


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