For Mason, the difficulty began in 2016. A mom of three, she had lately been launched from custody after serving a sentence for felony tax fraud.
It was a giant yr on the poll field, with the presidency up for grabs in addition to management of Congress, and Mason mentioned her mom inspired her to vote.
So on November 8, 2016, she arrived at an area polling station in Tarrant County, Texas, to forged her poll. However Mason found her title was not on the voting rolls. Irrespective of: An election employee provided her a provisional poll to fill out as a substitute.
However by February 2017, she was again in custody, this time dealing with expenses of unlawful voting, a second-degree felony with a potential sentence of as much as 20 years.
In Texas, folks with felony data robotically have their proper to vote restored — however solely after their sentence has been “absolutely discharged”. Mason thought her launch from jail meant she was within the clear.
However Texas regulation considers intervals of parole, group supervision and probation to be a part of the sentence.
Mason had no thought she couldn’t vote. She had been on supervised launch when she forged her poll, however she mentioned she had been despatched a voter registration card whereas staying at a midway home following her launch.
Thus started a authorized odyssey that has continued by means of this yr.
Defence legal professionals have argued Mason didn’t knowingly vote illegally, and so they referred to as on the testimony of the election employee who gave Mason her provisional poll.
Additionally they famous that Mason’s vote didn’t rely anyway. Provisional ballots are topic to extra scrutiny and usually are not tallied except voter eligibility is confirmed.
The Tarrant County district legal professional, nevertheless, argued that prosecuting Mason was a query of upholding election safety. In 2018, Mason was sentenced to 5 years in jail.
However as she appealed the prolonged sentence, her plight earned worldwide headlines. She in the end served 10 months earlier than her launch on bond — and simply this March, Texas’s Second Court docket of Appeals overturned her conviction.
Nonetheless, District Legal professional Phil Sorrells, a Republican, has pledged as lately as Could to enchantment the court docket’s choice.
In response to questions from Al Jazeera, his workplace shared a information launch that reads, partly, “This workplace will shield the poll field from fraudsters who assume our legal guidelines do not apply to them.”
Mason, nevertheless, has maintained that the fault lies with the “messy” course of surrounding the restoration of voting rights in Texas. She expressed shock on the district legal professional’s choice.
“I used to be surprised,” Mason informed Al Jazeera. “I really feel like, as a substitute of attacking one individual, let’s repair the system.”
Specialists say the patchwork of legal guidelines within the US — differing state by state — fosters conditions like Mason’s, ensnaring in any other case harmless folks.
“Confusion has actual penalties, as evidenced by Ms Mason’s case,” Patrick Berry, a lawyer with New York College’s Brennan Heart for Justice, informed Al Jazeera. “States like Texas, Florida and Tennessee are prosecuting folks for errors, and it’s usually unjust.”