(Reuters) – A Texas appeals court on Thursday overturned its earlier ruling and acquitted a woman who was sentenced to five years in prison for trying to vote in the 2016 election against state law, after a court of higher rank had ordered her to reconsider.
Crystal Mason was convicted of voting illegally two years after that election by a district court, which found that she had attempted to cast a provisional ballot despite being on probation from prison for a felony and therefore ineligible to vote.
The Texas Second Court of Criminal Appeals upheld that conviction in 2020, but two years later, the state’s highest criminal court ruled that the appeals court had failed to require proof that Mason knew it was a crime for her to vote in those circumstances.
The appeals court’s overturning of Mason’s conviction on Thursday, after finding that prosecutors had not actually sufficiently demonstrated that she knew her act was illegal, was hailed by voting rights advocates as a big win in one of the US states with the most restrictive voting laws.
Texas is among several Republican-controlled states that have adopted new limits on voting since the 2020 election in which President Joe Biden, a Democrat, defeated Republican incumbent Donald Trump, who had falsely claimed voter fraud was his cost the race.
“This ruling gives us hope not only for Ms. Mason, but for the broader fight for voting rights in Texas,” Christina Beeler, a voting rights attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said Thursday.
Supporters have criticized Texas’ restrictions as disproportionately hindering Black voters, like Mason, as well as Hispanic voters and other nonwhite voters who tend to vote for Democrats.
In 2021, the Republican governor of Texas signed a law that adds new identification requirements for mail-in voting, bans drive-through and 24-hour voting sites, curbs early voting, empowers partisan election observers, and limits who can help voters who need help due to disabilities or language barriers.
In November, a federal district court judge in Texas granted a motion from the U.S. Department of Justice and civil rights groups to block parts of the law that require officials to reject mail-in ballots and applications. based on minor errors or omissions, which he believed violated the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964.