This type of justice is not a surprise to most of us. Voter fraud versus voter error, who pays the price? Maddow points out the obvious.
Voter fraud? Rachel Maddow exposes a sad reality
Rachel Maddow started with the story of four men who committed voter fraud. There is no doubt that they were guilty of trying different methods to vote multiple times for Donald Trump. Most of these men got probation. Another got a few days in jail. In other words, they all got slaps on their wrists without any long-lasting effects.
Last year the Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, John Fetterman, took up an offer by Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick to pay for any voter fraud one finds. Fetterman, of course, found voter fraud by Republicans.
John Fetterman appeared last night on the Rachel Maddow show and pointed out yet another case of Republican fraud in Pennsylvania. So while Trump and his sycophants and enablers are trying to claim there is voter fraud in Pennsylvania. Ironically, the only ones found are those attempted by Trump voters.
It seems, anytime Republicans cry voter fraud, it is found on their side. One should remember the major fraud a couple of years ago in North Carolina. Projection is apropos here.
And now the story of Pamela Moses from The Guardian.
The case caught my attention for a few reasons. First, it is rare to see a prosecutor bring criminal charges against someone for election crimes, and I was curious whether this was a bona fide case of fraud or of someone who had made a mistake. Second, there has been growing awareness of racial disparities in punishments for election-related crimes. Black people such as Crystal Mason and Hervis Rogers have faced years in prison for making mistakes about their voting eligibility. White voters have received much lighter sentences for election-related crimes. …
At the time, election officials should have removed her from the rolls, but the court never sent election officials in Memphis the documents they needed to do so, according to a letter from an election official I obtained.
Moses didn’t know anything was amiss until 2019, when she launched a long-shot mayoral campaign. Election officials said she couldn’t appear on the ballot because of her felony. When they began to look into her eligibility, they also realized she had never been taken off the voter rolls. Moses went to court and asked a judge to clarify whether she was still on probation, and the court confirmed that she was. What happened next is at the crux of the case against her.
Moses did not believe the judge had correctly calculated her sentence. So she went to the local probation office and asked an officer to figure it out. An officer filled out and signed a certificate confirming her probation had ended. In Tennessee, people with felony convictions who want to vote need that document from a correction official. Moses submitted it to local election officials along with a voter registration form.
But the day afterwards, an official at the corrections department wrote an email to election officials saying a probation officer had made an “error” on Moses’ certificate. Moses was still serving an active felony sentence, they wrote, and was not eligible to vote. The department offered no explanation for the mistake.
Does anyone doubt the United States of America has a hue-based criminal justice system? There is no question.