Prosecutors want a reversal after a Texas woman’s voter fraud conviction was overturned

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Prosecutors in Texas asked the state’s highest criminal appeals court on Thursday to reverse a ruling that overturned a Fort Worth woman’s voter fraud conviction and five-year prison term for casting an illegal provisional ballot.

Last month, Crystal Mason’s illegal voting conviction was overturned by the Second Court of Appeals. Now the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office is asking the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to reverse that ruling.

Mason was convicted in 2018 of illegal voting in district court. Prosecutors maintained that Mason read and signed an affidavit accompanying the provisional ballot affirming that she had “fully completed” her sentence if convicted of a felony.

But the Second Court of Appeals ruled that even if she read the words on the affidavit, she may not have known that being on probation for a previous felony conviction left her ineligible to vote in 2016.

Tommy Buser-Clancy, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, which has been one of Mason’s representatives in the case, said in a statement that the request for further review of Mason’s case was “disappointing,” but they were “confident that justice will ultimately prevail.”

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