It's Official

Following a flood of mail-in votes favoring Nithya Raman over TV reality star, and complete nut job Spencer Pratt, she has advanced to a runoff against incumbent mayor Karen Bass.

The Republicans, of course, are alleging vote fraud, but there is no evidence of this. 

Nithya Raman had 115 days to make her case to Los Angeles voters.

The City Council member made a surprise late entry into the mayor’s race, the last of the major candidates to file for the primary. That left little time for her to form a campaign team, build her name recognition and persuade voters that she would be the best choice to lead the city.

On Monday, the Associated Press called the race, concluding that Raman would have enough votes to make a Nov. 3 runoff against Mayor Karen Bass, the first-place finisher who secured her spot in the showdown last week.

Reality television personality Spencer Pratt, who was in second place on election night, saw his lead over Raman steadily erode as mail-in ballots postmarked as late as June 2 were counted.

On Monday, Raman widened her gap over Pratt to nearly 3 percentage points. Bass had 34.3% of the vote, compared with 28.6% for Raman and 25.8% for Pratt, the latest results showed.

 Here's hoping that Raman cleans Bass' clock in the general election.  Bass' tenure of mayor has been defined by pro-developer, anti-homeless, and pro police union actions.

To Be Fair, He Could Just Be That F%$#ing Stupid

We are, after all, talking about Tommy Tuberville, who has the intellectual acumen of  bug-on-a-stick moss , so he could have just committed voter fraud by mistake.

One of President Donald Trump's top allies in the U.S. Senate has been busted for voting in a different state.

AL.com's Kyle Whitmire has been doggedly pursuing rumors about Sen. Tommy Tuberville's residency, voting record and, thus, his eligibility to run for Alabama governor, and the columnist has turned up evidence the Republican senator voted in Florida in 2018 – three months after moving back to the state he now represents.

"For years, Tuberville has struggled to convince everybody he was a bona fide Alabama 'resident citizen,'" Whitmire wrote. "Alabama law requires candidates for governor to have lived in the state for the last seven years. The evidence didn’t seem to be on his side."

Tuberville, for nearly two decades, owned a 4,000-square-foot beach house worth at least $4 million on Florida's Gulf Coast but purchased a much smaller home in Auburn, Alabama, in 2017 that he claimed as his primary residence while running for Senate, and he later sold that house in 2023.

"[That] three-bedroom, one-bathroom Auburn house ... has been appraised at about $300,000, less than a tenth of what the Florida beach house is worth. But this is what Tuberville said was his residence," Whitmire wrote. "As a U.S. senator, Tuberville has used campaign funds and taxpayer dollars to fly to Florida often — to dine in its restaurants and to travel by car. As much as, if not more than, he does such things in Alabama."

………

However, Florida election records tell another story.

"The tax records show that Tuberville moved to the Auburn house that August," Whitmire wrote. "But Florida election records show he and his wife, Suzanne, voted in Florida that November, three months after the income taxes say he became an Alabama resident. That’s also after the homestead exemption."

State law requires Senate candidates to live in Alabama for only a day, but gubernatorial candidates must reside there for at least seven years, and Tuberville's voting record suggests he hasn't.

"This is the Tommy Tuberville who stood on the Senate floor this year and demanded the country pass the SAVE Act, the bill to require proof of citizenship to register and a photo ID to vote, to stop people from voting where they’re not supposed to," Whitmire wrote. "In 2018, his vote did count — only in a state where he says his taxes show he no longer lived as a 'resident citizen.'"

Theoretically, Ron DeSantis could sicc his voter police Gestapo on Tuberville, and while I would pay to see this, it won't happen.

Voter fraud only counts when the accused is not white. 

Clearly, the Problem is Criticism of the Supreme Court

In writing his opinion emasculating the Voting Rights Act, Samuel Alito used fraudulent data. 

I would argue that this should embarrass the Supreme Court Justice, except that:

• Alito has no shame.
• He doesn't care, and likely know that it was bogus.

The claims Samuel Alito, a supreme court justice, made about voter turnout in Louisiana in a landmark Voting Rights Act case were based on a misleading data analysis, a Guardian review has found.

In his opinion gutting section 2 of the Voting Rights Act last week, Alito said that Black voter turnout had exceeded white voter turnout in two of the five most recent presidential elections, both nationally and in Louisiana. Alito’s claim was copied almost verbatim from a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the justice department. It was a critical data point Alito used to make the argument that the kind of discrimination that once made the Voting Rights Act necessary no longer exists.

“Vast social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South, where many Section 2 suits arise,” Alito wrote in a majority opinion in the case, which concerned Louisiana’s congressional map, joined by the five other conservative justices on the court. “Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”

But a review of turnout and racial data in Louisiana reveals that assertion relies on an unusual methodology. The justice department brief that Alito cited calculated Black and white voter turnout in Louisiana as a proportion of the total population of each racial group over the age of 18. Such an approach is not preferred by experts in calculating statewide turnout because the general over-18 population may include non-citizens, people with felony convictions and others who cannot legally vote. But it does yield Alito’s conclusion that Black voter turnout exceeded white voter turnout in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections in Louisiana.

The widely accepted approach is to consider voter turnout as a proportion of the citizen voting age population or the voter eligible population, the latter of which excludes non-citizens as well as people who cannot vote because of a felony conviction or because they have been deemed mentally incapacitated. When the Guardian analyzed turnout numbers in Louisiana using the citizen voting age population, it found that Black voter turnout in Louisiana only exceeded white voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election.

This is not the first time that Alito has cited fraudulent data, and it will not be the last.  He is a corrupt hypocrite.

FUUUUUUUUUUKKKKKKK!!!

The Virginia State Supreme Court has struck down the new redistricting map.

Their legal reasoning sounds completely bonkers, unless there is some sort of provision in the state constitution that specifically calls this out:

The problem, the court’s majority suggested, was that the first vote on the amendment in the General Assembly, which would authorize Democrats to redraw the map, occurred days before last fall’s legislative elections — meaning that some Virginians who cast their ballots early did so without knowing how their state lawmakers would vote on the new map.

How the Fuck is this a thing?

A representative vote in a way that the voter does not anticipate when foting is kind of like the foundation of representative democracy!

Partisan Hacks

The 6 conservative Supreme Court Justices just destroyed the Voting Rights Act by assuming facts not in evidence (that there is no racism now) and ignoring specific Congressional intent.

In 1982, when Congress passed a series of amendments strengthening the Voting Rights Act of 1965, lawmakers wanted to make one thing very clear: that minority voters seeking to prove violations of the Voting Rights Act do not have to prove that lawmakers intentionally discriminated against them based on race. Instead, under a provision of the law known as Section 2, Congress said, it is enough for voters to show that a given policy—a redistricting plan, for example—has the effect of making it more difficult for them to actually participate in democracy. 

At the time, Congress had good reason to be specific. Two years earlier, the Supreme Court in City of Mobile v. Bolden had held that a facially neutral electoral map did not violate the Voting Rights Act, even though it had the practical effect of reducing Black voting strength. In the 1982 amendments, Congress explicitly overruled Bolden; in its final report on the bill, the Senate Judiciary Committee affirmed that requiring challengers to prove discriminatory intent would impose an “inordinately difficult burden,” and would make it too easy for racist lawmakers to disguise their true motivations by leaving a “false trail” of non-discriminatory justifications.

In Louisiana v. Callais, which the Supreme Court decided on Wednesday, the six conservative justices took it upon themselves to reimpose the “inordinately difficult burden” Congress lifted five decades ago. In his opinion for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito strains to present Callais as faithful to the law passed by Congress: His opinion, he says, merely “updates” the tests that courts use to evaluate Section 2 claims, and “realigns” that framework with the text of the Voting Rights Act. 

In reality, what Alito and the majority have done is make it functionally impossible for voters to prove that a given map is an illegal racial gerrymander, no matter how discriminatory the map’s real-world impact. Their opinion in Callais preserves only a husk of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, leaving intact the ability of minority voters to cast ballots while simultaneously guaranteeing lawmakers’ power to ensure that those ballots are meaningless. Going forward, the same racist lawmakers whom Congress sought to bind in 1982 will be freer than ever to draw lines that gerrymander their Black and brown constituents out of electoral existence.

These corrupt rat-f%$#s need to be tarred and feathered.

Not Too Worried About This

The fact that Virginia county judge Jack Hurley has enjoined the redistricting that was approved by voters. 

Hurley is a hack.  He issued two similar rulings attempting to prevent the referendum, and they were overturned basically by the time that the ink was dry.

If this heads to SCOTUS, I'll be concerned. 

A Virginia judge sided Wednesday with Republicans challenging the commonwealth’s new redistricting process for the third time, a day after voters approved a new map that would favor Democrats.

After a hearing Wednesday, Judge Jack Hurley Jr. of the state Circuit Court of Tazewell County issued a ruling blocking the certification of the redistricting referendum approved by Virginia voters Tuesday, according to former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cucinelli.

Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones vowed Wednesday to appeal the decision in a statement posted on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

………

The legal saga started in January when Hurley first blocked the redistricting process. Hurley blocked the process a second time in a separate case challenging the process, reiterating what he saw as flaws the legislature used in implementing the map changes.

The Virginia Supreme Court ultimately took up both cases by March and set potential oral arguments over the constitutionality of the redistricting. It has not yet scheduled the oral arguments, and defenders of the new map are set to file their next briefing in the case later this week.

Virginia voters approved the referendum Tuesday night, the latest in a series of mid-decade redistricting moves touched off by Texas’ effort to target Democrat-held seats last summer.

 

 

A Big Win

The referendum to redistrict Virginia has passed, which is likely to net Democrats at least 3 seats in the next congressional election.

Democrats maintained their electoral momentum on Tuesday by securing the passage of an aggressively gerrymandered House map in Virginia, which could deliver the party up to four extra seats as it tries to win back control of Congress.

National party leaders had been heavily invested in the outcome, with Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, helping orchestrate the statewide Virginia referendum with Democratic state legislators. Speaker Mike Johnson, hanging on to a slim majority, tried to rally the state’s Republicans.

Democrats sought to focus the campaign on President Trump, who instigated the nationwide redistricting fight last summer in Texas to help House Republicans in the midterms. A vote for a gerrymandered House map, Democrats argued, was a vote to help their party stop Mr. Trump’s agenda. The president stayed out of the contest until the final hours before Election Day, when he urged Virginians to block the map.

“Donald Trump tried to rig the midterm elections by gerrymandering the national congressional map,” Mr. Jeffries said in an interview on Tuesday night. “He has failed.”

I don't like Gerrymandering, but I don't like bringing a knife to a gun fight either. 

Headline of the Day

Activist Who Pushed 2020 Election Fraud Claims Convicted of Election Fraud

—NBC News

Every accusation is a confession.

Every Accusation a Confession

Austin Smith, former Arizona state representative and former of the political wing of Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA, has pled guilty to election petition signature fraud.

Imagine that.  A voter fraud conspiracist engaging in voter fraud.

A former leader of the pro-Trump group Turning Point Action was sentenced on Tuesday to two years of probation and barred from running for office for five years for forging voters’ signatures on his petitions as part of his 2024 bid for re-election to the Arizona House.

The former state legislator, Austin Smith, pleaded guilty in November to two criminal counts and admitted that he had submitted fraudulent signatures to state election officials, including the name of a woman who had died.

The outcome was a striking twist for Mr. Smith, 30, a Republican who represented the Phoenix suburbs for one term and had repeatedly sought to sow doubt about the Arizona results in the 2020 election, when President Trump lost his re-election bid.

………

While trying to qualify for the Republican primary to run for re-election, Mr. Smith was accused in a court complaint in April 2024 of forging dozens of signatures on his nominating petitions. The complaint was filed by one of his constituents, James Ashurst, a Democrat, who said the signatures resembled Mr. Smith’s handwriting.

Three days after being named in the complaint, Mr. Smith resigned from his post as a senior director for Turning Point Action, the political arm of Turning Point USA, the grass-roots group founded by Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist who was assassinated last September. Mr. Smith also abandoned his bid for re-election, but denied any wrongdoing at the time.

Probation and a fine is all he got.  It's not enough.

Immigrant Committed Voter Fraud

Spoiler, it was Elon Musk, who violated Georgia election law by mailing out thousands of prefilled absentee ballots applications, in violation of state law.

Can we lock him up at the El Paso camp? 

If Donald Trump’s administration really wants to find evidence of foreign interference in Georgia’s elections, then they need look no further than the president’s old friend Elon Musk and his shady super PAC.

Members of the Georgia State Elections Board voted Wednesday to issue a formal letter of reprimand to Musk’s America PAC over the billionaire technocrat’s illegal scheme to get Trump elected. Georgia, a key battleground state in 2024, was the target of aggressive campaigning by Trump’s team.

In October 2024, the Georgia secretary of state’s office launched an investigation after receiving numerous reports from residents across several counties saying they’d received partially prefilled absentee ballot applications from Musk’s America PAC, according to John Fervier, the State Elections Board’s chairman.

There was evidence to suggest America PAC had violated a state law that prohibits any person or entity, other than an authorized relative, to send an elector an absentee ballot application prefilled with the elector’s required information, according to Janice Johnston, the SEB’s vice chairman.

America PAC had also failed to display in a conspicuous location that this was not an official government publication, was not provided by the government, and was not a ballot, Johnston added.

Jail, bitch.  

Even better than El Paso, we could put him in Epstein's old cell in MDC New York, where he could party like Jeffrey, like he always wanted to. 

Thank You ……… Mitch McConnell?!?!?!?!?!

It appears that Senator Yertle the Turtle is blocking Donald Trumps attempt to disenfranchise a significant portion of the American electorate.

Color me confused.

Senator Mitch McConnell appears to be stalling the voting bill backed by President Trump, and fellow Republicans are not happy.

McConnell, who leads the Senate Rules Committee, is refusing to schedule a vote on the legislation, thus preventing it from moving forward. The bill would create barriers for voting, requiring specific forms of ID in order for Americans to exercise their constitutional right.

………

Last year, McConnell wrote in The Wall Street Journal that such a bill would give a future Democratic president and Congress the ability to “use more sweeping mandates to carry out a complete federal takeover of American elections.” 

“The current administration has better ways to spend its time than laying the groundwork for a leftwing election takeover,” McConnell wrote.

Well, I never thought that McConnel was stupid, I just thought that he was evil.

Good News Everyone!

I invented a device that makes you read this in your head using my voice!

It appears that despite their best efforts, the Supreme Court could not find an adequate bit of hypocritical mental/legal gymnastics to shut down California's redistricting while approving the Texas redrawing of Congressional boundaries, so California's redistricting stands.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed for now a new California voting map that could help Democrats gain up to five seats in Congress, the latest twist in a national fight between liberals and conservatives seeking advantage in this year’s midterm elections.

The justices cleared the state to use a map pushed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and approved by voters that was intended to offset a redistricting effort by Republicans in Texas sought by President Donald Trump. The Texas map could net the GOP up to five additional seats.

The high court’s ruling will remain in effect while a lawsuit challenging California’s map works its way through the courts. The Supreme Court ruled in December that the Texas map was constitutional, so many legal experts expected the justices to approve the California map as well.

The justices did not provide a rationale for their decision in the brief order. There were no noted dissents.

The corrupt 6 right wing Justices could not figure out a way to pit a fog leaf on the naked partisanship involved with making different decisions based on party affiliation,

At least they haven't so far. 

This Is Unfortunately Not Tinfoil Hat Stuff

Jenn Bud suggests that the purpose is not to engage in immigration theater, nor is its purpose to deport thousands of people, (though that is a perceived benefit of these people), but rather its primary purpose to create an on the ground law enforcement infrastructure on the ground in Democratic voting areas that will be used to suppress voting.

I know that you may be thinking that this is just a conspiracy theory, but Jeb Bush did this in Florida in the 2000 elections, where state and local law enforcement aggressively impeded and harassed voters in minority areas.

Not only could it happen, it already has.

Believe it or not, there is a purpose behind which cities are raided by ICE that few are discussing.

The immigration enforcement agencies are not simply choosing the biggest, most blue cities to raid just because they hate them. Not even because they believe they are sanctuary cities who refuse to cower and bend the knee to their thugs. Not because they believe that these cities are full of criminal migrants, the worst of the worst as they say. Their own statistics prove this point as 97% of Chicago arrests had no criminal record.

Yet, not a single media outlet has bothered to ask why. If ICE and CBP are not meeting their goals of arresting the worst of the worst. What are they doing? What is the real purpose of these raids?

………

The purpose of these raids is to establish and [maintain? strengthen?] a law enforcement infrastructure to target these specific cities during the upcoming elections.

………

Additionally, the DOJ has issued the new domestic terrorist directive redefining the term to mean essentially anyone who obstructs federal agents, is pro-immigrant and anti-fascist. Secretary Noem recently stated, “American citizens are increasingly under threat from assassination attempts, intimidation tactics, and violence perpetrated by our adversaries, radical Islamist extremists, and radical Left-wing terrorists.” And Trump issued an executive order to expand the jurisdiction of the Joint Terrorism Task Forces to his political opponents and those he deems “radical Left-wing terrorists.”

These are the tools they intend to use soon during elections.

I expect this administration, Secretary Noem and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott to order federal immigration agents to accost voters as they stand in line on voting day. Those of color, specifically Latinos, will have their citizenship questioned. And judging by how the agencies are grabbing people without even conducting on-site citizenship interviews, then taking them into ICE custody for a day, or two or three before letting them go, I expect this will be used to prevent citizens from voting. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Border Patrol set up checkpoints in areas of high Latino populations. 

As I noted above, Jeb Cush did the exactly this in 2000.

Of Course He Did

Ferociously corrupt Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has issued a stay preventing the ruling enjoining Texas' racist redistricting project.

Why am I not surprised?

The Supreme Court on Friday evening temporarily allowed Texas to use its newly redrawn, Republican-friendly congressional voting map for the 2026 midterm elections.

The decision blocked, for now, a lower-court ruling that had said Texas could not use the map. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who is assigned to handle emergency applications from that region of the country, issued the administrative stay, a temporary ruling meant to give the full court time to consider the issue.

The Texas attorney general earlier in the evening had filed an emergency application with the justices, asking them to allow the state to use the new map.

Justice Alito requested that the civil rights groups that had challenged the map respond to the attorney general’s request by Monday at 5 p.m., signaling the court would likely consider the issue speedily.

My guess is that SCOTUS will delay until the upcoming elections makes enforcing the lower court's order.  

I did predict this. 

That's Gotta Hurt

A 3 judge panel in Texas has ruled that the Texas mid-decade redistricting was driven by race and hence unlawful.

Because of provisions of the Voting Rights Act, this can only be appealed to the Supreme Court, which with a non-corrupt court would mean that the 2026 elections in Texas would have to be held under the old districts, but given the nature of the court, and particularly the nature of Chief Justice John Roberts, (he's made it his life's work to prevent n*****s from voting) I'm not sure if there won't be some sort of highly irregular shadow docket bullsh%$ to ensure Republican political advantage.

Texas cannot use its new congressional map for the 2026 election and will instead need to stick with the lines passed in 2021, a three-judge panel ruled Tuesday.

The decision is a major blow for Republicans, in Texas and nationally, who pushed through this unusual mid-decade redistricting at the behest of President Donald Trump. They were hoping the new map would yield control of 30 of the state’s 38 congressional districts — up from the 25 they currently hold — and help protect the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in the ruling striking down the new lines. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.” 

This is a finding of fact, and (theoretically, at least) any appeal should only make decisions of matters of law. 

………

It was not immediately clear if the state still has a legal path to restoring the new map in time for 2026. Unlike most federal lawsuits, which are heard by a single district judge and then appealed to a circuit court, voting rights lawsuits are initially heard by two district judges and one circuit judge, and their ruling can only be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Tuesday’s decision came from a three-judge panel made up of Brown — a former Texas Supreme Court justice who once clerked for Abbott — and U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama, a Barack Obama appointee. Judge Jerry Smith, who was appointed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by Ronald Reagan, cast a dissenting vote and was expected to soon issue his own opinion. 

The ruling comes 10 days into the monthlong period when candidates can sign up for the March primary.

………

The state had argued that the entire redistricting process was based on a partisan goal, which the U.S. Supreme Court has previously said courts cannot intervene to prevent. But the plaintiffs pointed to a letter sent from the U.S. Department of Justice directing Texas to redraw its maps to eradicate four majority non-white districts, arguing that was the original sin that cast a racially discriminatory pall over the whole process.

In Tuesday’s ruling, Brown said it was difficult to analyze the DOJ letter because it contained “so many factual, legal and typographical errors.” But the fact that state leaders had pointed to that letter repeatedly as the impetus for redistricting was enough, the judges said. 

Damn!  That is some serious shade that Judge Brown is throwing at the DoJ.

And in response, California redistricted to counter Texas.

Seems like a big loss for Team R. 

Good News

Though I expect the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling from U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers requiring North Carolina to certify the victory of Democratic incumbent state Supreme Court judgeAllison Riggs.

The core of the ruling is that one should not be allowed to change election rules retroactively when they do not like the results:

In a ruling that could put an end to nearly six months of legal battles over North Carolina’s contested Supreme Court election, a federal judge on Monday ruled against the Republican candidate’s effort to overturn his narrow loss.

Chief U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled that Jefferson Griffin, a judge on the state Court of Appeals, cannot “change the rules of the game after it had been played.”

Myers ordered the state not to throw out any votes and to certify the results of the election as they were at the close of the canvass period, with Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs winning by 734 votes.

………

However, Myers has put his own order on hold for seven days to give Griffin a chance to appeal.

I would expect this to go to the Supreme Court, where it has no chance, because we know how that the defining characteristic of Chief Justice Roberts legal career can be summarized as, "Not letting n***ers vote," and when added to Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh that gets you to 5 votes against democracy and the rule of law.

OH!!! Canada!!!

Peak Canada

[image or embed]

— Eric Columbus (@ericcolumbus.bsky.social) April 28, 2025 at 11:51 AM

I'm not certain about this, but this may be the most Canadian thing that I have ever heard of.

Today is election day in the Great White North, and we will see if Donald Trump has screwed the pooch for the Conservative Party of Canada, and if there will be a backlash resulting in a Liberal Party victory as polls suggest.

I have no clue as to who this will go, but Canadians telling American journalists to f%$#-off, and then apologizing for it is a very strong reinforcement of stereotypes, at least for English speaking Canadians. (the Quebecois apologize for nothing) 

I have to note that the Canadians count their votes by hand in one night, and we will probably know the general results by midnight.

As for me, I am of the same mind as xkcd creator Randall Munroe:

I Voted Early

Not a Long Video

I voted early, and it went very quickly.

Accompanied by my intrepid, if somewhat half-assed cameraman Charlie Saroff, I was in and out in 15 minutes.

I would have been out in 10, but I thought that it would be cool to use the digital marking machine.

I lost 5 minutes waiting for those, and then switched to the old fashioned stations with a pen.

I'm surprised that it went so quickly.

There were 11 early voting stations in Baltimore County, so I went after I picked up my kid at the train station.

Vote early and often.

バカにつける薬はない ⃰

So, I'm working on something, and lose track of time, and I don't realize it until 10 minutes before the polls closed, and I am 45 minutes from my polling location.

I am a f%$#ing idiot.

Definitely doing early voting for the general.

I deserve any opprobrium that my reader(s) heap upon me.

I have met the enemy, and he is me.

^*It's Japanese for, "There is no medicine for stupidity."  (Feel free to correct my Japanese)

It Only Took 8 Years

Crystal Mason, a felon who mistakenly thought, and was so informed by the local voting authorities in Texas, that she could vote, and then was tried and sentenced to 5 years in jail, has been exonerated.

A Texas appeals court reversed the conviction of a Black woman who had been sentenced to five years in prison on a charge of illegally voting in the 2016 presidential election, acquitting her in a nationally watched case that civil rights attorneys cast as part of a broader fight for voting rights.

Crystal Mason voted with a provisional ballot in 2016 but, she has said, did not know she was ineligible to do so at the time. The ballot was not counted, but she was convicted of illegal voting in 2018.

Texas Second Court of Appeals Judge Wade Birdwell ruled Thursday that there was not enough evidence to show Mason had known she was ineligible to vote.

The case had been seen as an example of a GOP-led crackdown on alleged voter fraud in Texas, and Mason’s attorneys had framed it as an attempt at intimidating other voters, particularly people of color and those returning from prison, by making an example of Mason.

While I am happy for Ms. Mason, the anti-American conservatives who want to discourage Black and Brown people from voting largely achieved their goal, to instill fear in minority voting.