Live data from Hacker News

Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation

washingtonpost.com

101–110 of 157 posts

Re: Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation

#101

I can't quite figure out what the major differentiating factor is between that case and this one where someone intentionally tried to vote twice and just got 2 years of probation: https://twitter.com/ryanlcooper/status/979519186820128768 I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually.

Isn't the whole point of probation that you're under a microscope and face greater penalties for wrongdoing, in exchange for an early release or bypassing jail for an earlier offense?

Re: Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation

#102

Man the US just disgust me. Land of the free my ass. The amount of inhumane policies is just staggering. The most brutal and unjust “justice” system in the free world. That American put up with this system is the biggest puzzle. It seems like the only freedom Americans care about is to carry a gun. Any other freedom they are cool with flushing down the toilet. Sorry for the angry rant, I know there are lots of good a…

Because when it comes down to it, a lot of these things are supported on a local or state level. HN is California-heavy and reflects the politics of the state (and the Bay Area specifically). As such, the prevailing opinion is likely to be that this is voter suppression/racism in action/terrible policy.

The fact of the matter is though, this is a Texas law, passed by Texan politicians, elected by Texan people, who probably on a general level consider voter fraud to be a bigger problem than voter suppression.

While other parts of the US may not like this kind of thing, they're not in a place to do anything about it. Much like if France wants to pass laws outside of the domain of the EU that Germany doesn't like, Germany can't really do much about it besides writing some news articles.

And to some degree, I'm of the opinion that things are better this way. If other states want to shit on their education systems or fail to invest in public health or (insert other policy here), they'll reap what they sow (which is probably, to some degree, exactly what they want). I'd rather that their decisions and policies by limited to themselves rather than being applied at a federal level to everyone.

Re: Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation

#103

Man the US just disgust me. Land of the free my ass. The amount of inhumane policies is just staggering. The most brutal and unjust “justice” system in the free world. That American put up with this system is the biggest puzzle. It seems like the only freedom Americans care about is to carry a gun. Any other freedom they are cool with flushing down the toilet. Sorry for the angry rant, I know there are lots of good a…

>The most brutal and unjust “justice” system in the free world.

I generally agree with you about the state of our criminal justice system, but I think you'll find US freedoms are a mixed bag when compared to the rest of the "free world." If you take a step back from just our criminal justice system, let's compare us to the UK. If you want to be more like them you'll need to restrict abortions to the first trimester, lose your gun rights, lose your free speech rights, lose separation of church and state, still can't vote while in prison, gay marriage is a states rights issue (not available in Northern Ireland), gain some consumer protections around privacy and returns, censor the internet, and heavily weigh immigration towards "ability" based candidates rather than "diversity."

>It seems like the only freedom Americans care about is to carry a gun.

The two rights I hear most about in the US are guns and abortion, but that's because those two are the most consistently under attack. I think free speech and privacy is going to be getting more mainstream attention soon because of what's going on in the tech industry.

Re: Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation

#104
post #100

How does such an attorney and judge feel after such a trial? Do they feel satisfied, fulfilled? Taking away 5 years of someone's life over a little mistake that didn't hurt anyone? I don't get it: why does a free people like the Americans allow for that kind of sinister figures to be their prosecutors and judges?

I agree that the exact level of punishment may be disproportionate, but where do you get "hurt no one"? An invalid vote cancels a valid one. Is disenfranchisement not a big deal anymore?

Why should criminals be denied representation? Does committing a crime suddenly make you no longer human?

Re: Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation

#105
post #61

How does such an attorney and judge feel after such a trial? Do they feel satisfied, fulfilled? Taking away 5 years of someone's life over a little mistake that didn't hurt anyone? I don't get it: why does a free people like the Americans allow for that kind of sinister figures to be their prosecutors and judges?

>How does such an attorney and judge feel after such a trial? They feel ecstatic. They won. The good guys won again, yay! You have a 10oz pot brownie (with a very small amount of mj in it), that's distribution amounts, 30 years in jail for you. Yay! The good guys won again. * I see I have downvoters... Maybe you don't believe me? I've been working around both the prosecution and defense for around 20 years now, have…

Even from the outside this is obviously true. They consider themselves the good guys by definition, because they see themselves as representing justice, as defined by the criminal code. A noble calling. Once you accept that, pure job performance (convictions) becomes an easy metric. The thought of ruining some individual's (or family's) life over recreational amounts of pot is either justified or compartmented away. Or like aaronsw...once the prosecutors are on it, there's no more question of proportion or actual justice, it's a matter of looking for the conviction.

Edit: I want to amend this a bit. It is something of a noble calling. In a better world, the executive legal function could depend a lot more on legislative and judicial functions to produce a criminal code that served justice better, and just worry about prosecuting what they can according to the law. But in so many cases now, the law is an ass.

Re: Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation

#106
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would prefer 0 days in prison because I don't think voting while a felon should be a crime. But, if we still want to call this situation voter fraud, how about we sentence them to community service? This person is not a danger to society, so I see no reason to put them in prison. More prion just messes up their life further and costs everybody a lot of precious tax dollars.

While I agree that what this woman did shouldn't be voter fraud, community service isn't sufficient deterrent for actual voter fraud. People put in lots of volunteer hours to help get their preferred candidate elected, so they'd probably be willing to risk community service too. Voter fraud is very dangerous to society, as society depends on our trust in institutions.

In-person voter fraud is vanishingly rare (0.0003 percent to 0.0025 percent, according to a recent meta-analysis[1]). A severe penalty in this sort of case serves no meaningful deterrent function.

[1] https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/debunking-voter-fraud...

Re: Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation

#107
Some options:

Hey, you're not on the list, you can't vote.

Hey, you're not on the list, use the computer in the corner to enter your details and see if you're eligible.

Hey, you're not on the list, here is a provisional ballot, we will verify your info and if it clears, your vote will be counted.

You should not get 5 years in prison because the election board is incapable of securing their processes.

Re: Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation

#108
post #107

Some options: Hey, you're not on the list, you can't vote. Hey, you're not on the list, use the computer in the corner to enter your details and see if you're eligible. Hey, you're not on the list, here is a provisional ballot, we will verify your info and if it clears, your vote will be counted. You should not get 5 years in prison because the election board is incapable of securing their processes.

The final option (provisional ballot) is what happened. The problem is she also signed an affidavit stating that she was eligible. It is a completely victimless crime and a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Re: Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation

#109
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the exact level of punishment may be disproportionate, but where do you get "hurt no one"? An invalid vote cancels a valid one. Is disenfranchisement not a big deal anymore?

Why should criminals be denied representation? Does committing a crime suddenly make you no longer human?

Right, I can understand arguments for "you shouldn't lose the vote in that case", but that's a separate issue from "given that her vote wasn't valid, she was disenfranchising someone".

And "no franchise" does not imply "not human", unless you're saying that every country should allow foreigners to vote in their election or else they're deeming them non-human.

Re: Texas woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for voting while on probation

#110

How does such an attorney and judge feel after such a trial? Do they feel satisfied, fulfilled? Taking away 5 years of someone's life over a little mistake that didn't hurt anyone? I don't get it: why does a free people like the Americans allow for that kind of sinister figures to be their prosecutors and judges?

Easy. This woman was black.

And I'm only half joking here. There's a similar case where a white woman purposely tried to impersonate her mother so that she could vote for Trump twice, and she was not charged.

Post reply on HN