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Mason gained national attention after she was convicted for voting while under supervised release for felony tax fraud. She said she didn’t know she was ineligible to vote., who was given a five-year prison sentence for casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election while on supervised release for federal tax evasion.by the Tarrant County-based Second Court of Appeals means she is formally acquitted of the felony voting charge.
The case thrust Mason, who is Black, into the political fray amid a Republican-led crackdown on voter fraud, partly fueled by baseless claims of rampant illegal voting. Mason’s case dates back to 2016 when, after discovering she was not on the voter roll, she submitted a provisional ballot in the presidential election on the advice of a poll worker. Her ballot was rejected because she was not eligible to participate in elections while still on supervised release for a federal tax fraud conviction. She was arrested a few months later.
In its 2022 ruling, the Court of Criminal Appeals held that Texas election law requires individuals to know they are ineligible to vote to be convicted of illegal voting. The law had been clarified by lawmakers in 2021 with additions to the election code stating Texans may not be convicted of voting illegally “solely upon the fact that the person signed a provisional ballot,” and instead required other evidence to corroborate they knowingly tried to cast an unlawful vote.
“We conclude that the quantum of the evidence presented in this case is insufficient to support the conclusion that Mason actually realized that she voted knowing that she was ineligible to do so and, therefore, insufficient to support her conviction for illegal voting,” the decision reads.
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