How radical right authoritarians corrupt the law, persecute voters and hate on elections

A complicated opinion in the NYT relates the story of a Texas woman, Crystal Mason, who cast a provisional vote in 2016 when she was not an eligible voter. She was unaware of her ineligible to vote status. Accusing her of vote fraud, Texas prosecutors and a trial judge tried to put her in jail for 5 years after she was convicted in a trial in 2018. Last week A Texas state appeals court acquitted her. It took 8 freaking years to just get to what appears to be a final, correct decision. Presumably this unjustifiable legal nightmare is finally over.

Ms. Mason endured years of terror, uncertainty and pain just for submitting an provisional ballot by accident. That is authoritarianism, plain, simple and undeniable.

The NYT opinion (full opinion not paywalled off for 30 days) comments on the morally rotted outrageousness and absolute legal baselessness of this radical authoritarian prosecution:

A Reversal Cannot Undo the Damage 

Caused by This Voting Fraud Case

While the prosecution of Ms. Mason may have failed, it still could have broader consequences in chilling people’s willingness to exercise their right to vote. Few would want to vote if it means going through what Ms. Mason did. As such, the reversal in her case cannot undo much of the damage that irresponsible Texas prosecutors wrought.

As the federal circuit court of appeals that oversees Texas recognized decades ago, “short of physical violence,” nothing has “a more chilling effect” on voting than “baseless arrests and prosecutions.” Unfortunately, that may be the point of bringing cases like Ms. Mason’s, as they suggest apparent racial disparities at work in voting-fraud prosecutions.

When Ms. Mason voted, she was on federal supervised release, which is like a term of probation that federal criminal defendants serve after leaving prison. Those on release must obey certain court-ordered conditions but are otherwise free to live their life as they see fit. Under Texas law, such individuals are ineligible to vote, which Ms. Mason did not know. Prosecutors charged her anyway, convicting her on a theory that they did not have to prove that she knew she was ineligible; they just had to prove that she was ineligible.

An appellate court agreed with prosecutors’ theory and upheld her conviction, while noting: “The evidence does not show that she voted for any fraudulent purpose.”

Texas’ highest criminal court ruled that the state’s voter fraud statute requires proof that a defendant knew she was ineligible and sent the case back to the lower appellate court, where Ms. Mason’s conviction was overturned.

Here two different Texas courts both agreed with a decision that clearly and directly violated the law. Those judges and the prosecutors who brought the case should be fired and prosecuted for malicious prosecution of an innocent person. But this is morally rotted authoritarian Texas government at work. The thug operatives involved here will likely be rewarded for their fine job in abusing their power to persecute and piss all over voters, elections and democracy itself.

I post this as just more solid evidence of the (1) authoritarian intent, and (2) cynical moral depravity of America’s radical right Christian nationalist and plutocratic wealth and power movements. For a variety of reasons, too many Americans simply cannot see the threat right in front of their noses. Our democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law are all in grave danger.

In view of the mountain of damning evidence, how so many Americans still cannot see the grave threat to democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law in American authoritarianism and red state outrages like this is way beyond me. 

A major authoritarian explicitly speaking in   

defense of an American tyranny of the minority