[Where do states stand on voting rights for felons? Here’s a breakdown.] 
 
 Ms. Mason, who was sentenced to 60 months in jail for tax fraud and was released in early 2016, has said that she didn’t know that she wasn’t allowed to vote in that year’s presidential election. She cast a provisional ballot at her local church after being told that her name could not be found on the rolls. The ballot was never counted. 
 
 “Crystal’s name was purged from the rolls when she went to prison, but Crystal did not know that,” Ms. Grinter said in an interview on Tuesday. 
 
 Whether felons can vote varies state by state, and has become a contentious issue. More than six million Americans have been stripped of their voting rights because of felony disenfranchisement laws, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that works on criminal justice reform. 
 
 Two months ago, a petition was started online to have all charges against Ms. Mason, who is black, thrown out. In the petition her photo is placed next to a photo of Terri Lynn Rote, a white woman who was convicted of voter fraud in Iowa for trying to vote for President Trump twice. Ms. Rote was sentenced to two years’ probation and a $750 fine. The petition has over 38,000 signatures. 
 
 As she prepared to appeal the rejection of her motion for a new trial, Ms. Mason said she had high hopes. 
 
 “I showed my kids that no matter what you can get out and get your life in order,” said Ms. Mason. “But sometimes, regardless of whatever your past is, you are still going to be beat up for it.” ||||| A judge sentenced a Rendon woman to five years in prison Wednesday for voting illegally in the 2016 presidential election while she was on supervised release from a 2011 fraud conviction. 
 
 Crystal Mason, 43, waived her right to a jury trial and chose to have state District Judge Ruben Gonzalez assess her sentence. 
 
 J. Warren St. John, her defense attorney, said after the verdict that an appeal had already been filed and that he is hopeful his client will soon be released on bond. 
 
 "I find it amazing that the government feels she made this up," St. John told the court. "She was never told that she couldn't vote, and she voted in good faith. Why would she risk going back to prison for something that is not going to change her life?" 
 
 
 
 
 
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 According to a report released in 2016 compiled by the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice reform advocacy group, more than 6 million felons in the United States and nearly 500,000 in Texas were ineligible to vote in 2016. 
 
 During her testimony, Mason — who served just shy of three years in federal prison — told the court that she was assigned a provisional ballot after she arrived at her usual polling place and discovered that her name was not on the voter roll. 
 
 Gonzalez, who questioned Mason during her testimony, asked why she did not thoroughly read the documents she was given at the time. 
 
 The form you are required to sign to get the provisional ballot is called an affidavit, Gonzales told Mason. "There's a legal connotation to that, right?" Gonzales asked. 
 
 Mason responded that she was never told by the federal court, her supervision officer, the election workers or U.S. District Judge John McBryde, the sentencing judge in her fraud case, that she would not be able to vote in elections until she finished serving her sentence, supervised release included. She also said she did not carefully read the form because an election official was helping her. 
 
 During cross-examination by Tarrant County prosecutor Matt Smid, Mason was reminded that she had jeopardized her freedom in the past by violating federal tax laws. 
 
 Sacrificing her freedom to vote was not something she would knowingly do, Mason told Gonzales. 
 
 "I inflated returns," Mason said. "I was trying to get more money back for my clients. I admitted that. I owned up to that. I took accountability for that. I would never do that again. I was happy enough to come home and see my daughter graduate. My son is about to graduate. Why would I jeopardize that? Not to vote. ... I didn't even want to go vote." 
 
 Mason was taken to jail after the conclusion of her trial on Wednesday as a chorus of small children leaving the courtroom waved and said, "Bye-bye, Big Mama." 
 
 SHARE COPY LINK In a jailhouse interview with the Star-Telegram, Rosa Ortega said she has lost custody of her children and will likely be deported when her eight-year sentence is up. 
 
 Improper tax refunds 
 
 Mason, who was known as Crystal Mason-Hobbs at the time, pleaded guilty to fraud in 2011. As part of her plea agreement, she was ordered to pay $4.2 million in restitution, according to court documents. 
 
 The fraud charge stemmed from a tax preparation business Mason and her ex-husband, Sanford Taylor Hobbs III, owned and operated in Everman in which they submitted inflated tax refunds to the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of clients. 
 
 Mason later divorced her husband, who received a similar sentence after he also pleaded guilty. Mason testified Wednesday that she has remade herself since her release from prison, including getting a degree in a new field and getting a new job. 
 
 She had gone to vote at her mother's insistence and brought her driver's license as identification, according to her testimony. When poll workers could not find her name on the list of registered voters, Mason said, she obtained a provisional ballot and was coached through the process by a worker. 
 
 Mason testified that she did not remember the form saying anything about people on supervised release being prohibited from voting. 
 
 To register to vote in Texas, a person must be 18 and a U.S. citizen and cannot be a convicted felon or have been declared mentally incapacitated by a court. In Texas, convicted felons can have their voting privileges restored after fully completing their sentences. 
 
 The Tarrant County case of Rosa Maria Ortega, a 37-year-old Grand Prairie mother of four who had a green card, drew national attention. Convicted of voting illegally, she received a sentence of eight years in prison for voting in the 2012 general election and the 2014 Republican primary runoff. 
 
 SHARE COPY LINK In this short video, find out who can register to vote, where to register, which documents are needed and when you must register by to vote in the next election. 
 
 This report includes material from the Star-Telegram archives. ||||| The same judge who originally sentenced her to five years prison for casting an illegal ballot while being a felon under supervision has denied Crystal Mason's motion for a new trial. 
 
 Mason, of Rendon south of Fort Worth, was convicted on March 28 and sentenced to a five-year prison stint by State District Judge Ruben Gonzalez. 
 
 Gonzalez denied her petition late Monday in a 16-page ruling. 
 
 Since her conviction, Mason has been at the center of controversial arguments about the existence of white privilege and voter suppression efforts, with more than 38,000 signatures on a petition to have all charges against her dropped, numerous news stories and editorials and a deluge of social media posts in support of and against the sentence imposed in her case. 
 
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 Crystal Mason, center, convicted for illegal voting and sentenced to 5 years in prison, during a break in Ruben Gonzalez's court, State District Court 432 at Tim Curry Justice Center in Fort Worth, Texas, Friday, May 25, 2018. Max Faulkner mfaulkner@star-telegram.com 
 
 Mason's attorney, Alison Grinter, said that she and other groups who thought the prison sentence was harsh were disappointed. Obviously, it was an uphill struggle to get the judge who made the initial ruling to change his mind. 
 
 But no one is more disappointed than Mason, Grinter said. 
 
 Prosecutor Matt Smid, Assistant Criminal District Attorney -- Chief of White Collar Crime/Public Integrity Unit, gives his closing arguments during a hearing in Ruben Gonzalez's court, State District Court 432 at Tim Curry Justice Center in Fort Worth, Texas, Friday, May 25, 2018. The hearing was for Crystal Mason, who was convicted for illegal voting and sentenced to 5 years in prison. Max Faulkner mfaulkner@star-telegram.com 
 
 "She's one step closer to going to prison for a vote that didn't even count," Grinter said. "Hopefully, we'll be able to get this case before fresh eyes in the appellate court and have a better outcome." 
 
 The Tarrant County district attorney's office vigorously opposed the new trial motion during a March 25 hearing and in a brief in support of the state's position. 
 
 Matt Smid, the prosecutor trying Mason's case, argued in his court filing that the judge does not have the authority to consider a friend of the court brief from the Texas Civil Rights Project and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Texas. 
 
 The civil rights groups' brief states that the law that convicted Mason is trumped by a 2002 federal statute that gives an individual who believes that he or she has voting privileges the right to cast a provisional ballot in a federal election, shifting the burden of proof to the state. 
 
 Smid never argued that the two non-profits' attorneys were incorrect, only that the assertions in the brief cannot be considered because they were not submitted by the deadline and because they were not raised by Mason's attorneys. 
 
 Grinter argued that the judge could consider points stated by the attorneys with the Texas Civil Rights Project and ACLU. The argument that the federal government has provided a pathway for voters unsure about their eligibility to vote provides a new perspective the judge can use to evaluate Grinter's arguments, according to her brief. 
 
 Defense attorney Alison Grinter is seen during a hearing in Ruben Gonzalez's court, State District Court 432 at Tim Curry Justice Center in Fort Worth, Texas, Friday, May 25, 2018. The hearing was for Crystal Mason, who was convicted for illegal voting and sentenced to 5 years in prison. Max Faulkner mfaulkner@star-telegram.com 
 
 Rebecca Stevens, one of the Texas Civil Rights Project attorneys who worked on the brief, said the federal law worked in Mason's case. Mason tried to vote and the state did not count that vote after determining that she was ineligible. But the sentence handed down was unfair, Stevens said. 
 
 "Of the prosecutions we've seen engaging in election misconduct, the sentence that Mason received is far more aggressive," Stevens said. "The problem with that, at least anecdotally, is that people of color are being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, versus an election official actually forging signatures who got probation." 
 
 In the end, the judge agreed with the state. Grinter said she will file an appeal with the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth. Grinter also said the ruling dovetails with a U. S. Supreme Court ruling upholding Ohio's purging of its voter rolls. 
 
 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that states could kick people off voter rolls if they have not recently voted and did not answer a notice from election officials, according to a New York Times story. 
 
 "Those who are working to suppress voting need to prove that in-person voting fraud is a real thing," Grinter said. "And they use cases like this to do that. It's sad those kinds of efforts have to stand on the backs of people like Crystal."
– Civil rights advocates see this as a tale of two voters. Crystal Mason, who is black, was sentenced to five years in prison for casting a ballot in Tarrant County, Texas, in 2016 while being a felon under supervision. Terri Lynn Rote, who is white, was sentenced to two years’ probation and a $750 fine for trying to vote for President Trump twice in Iowa. On Monday, the judge who sentenced Mason turned down her request for a new trial. “Prison is a lot closer for her today,” Mason’s lawyer told the New York Times. Mason, 43, had been sentenced to 60 months for tax fraud. She served part of her sentence and was released in 2016. She says she didn’t know that being a felon meant she was ineligible to vote. Her name had been purged from the voter rolls, and she was given a provisional ballot, which should have alerted her to her ineligibility, the prosecutor said. The judge had the option of sentencing Mason to anything from probation to 20 years, reported the Dallas Morning News in March. Whether a felon can vote varies by state. For example, as the New York Times notes, in Vermont, a person convicted of murder retains the right to vote, even while in prison. But in Mississippi, a conviction for perjury is enough to void the right to vote. Mason told the Star-Telegram that she was originally sent to jail for inflating returns and took responsibility for her actions. “I would never do that again. I was happy enough to come home and see my daughter graduate. My son is about to graduate. Why would I jeopardize that? Not to vote. ... I didn't even want to go vote.” Mason's attorney is appealing the decision. Mason's case is juxtaposed with Rote's in an online petition calling for charges against Mason to be dropped.