Crystal Mason’s belief in democracy was shaken — but not destroyed

Crystal Mason was at work on Thursday when she got the call: Her decade-long nightmare was finally over.

For 10 years, Texas prosecutors had accused Mason of voter fraud after she cast a provisional ballot that was never counted in the 2016 election. She was convicted in 2018 and served 10 months in prison.

Mason maintained her innocence and spent the years following her conviction appealing the ruling, saying she did not realize — and was not told at the time — that she was ineligible to vote because of a previous tax fraud conviction.

In 2024, it appeared that she would be vindicated after an appellate court reversed her conviction. But prosecutors successfully pushed for yet another review of the case. For two more years, Mason was scrutinized until the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld her acquittal.

After the emotional toll of her lengthy ordeal, Mason said the decision feels surreal and is still sinking in.

“Still shocked, still taking it in right now,” she said, exhaling. “You go vote, you’re supposed to, especially if you were taught that, and that’s what I was doing. But it let me know how important it was, with this situation that went with me, over a provisional ballot that never counted — and yet, I got prosecuted to the fullest behind it.”

Mason’s story, which she shared in an interview with The 19th, could come across as a cautionary tale, where voting put at risk an American citizen uncertain about her ability to cast her ballot. In an instant, what had been a habit put her at odds with the voting system. For years, she had been among the millions of Black women considered the backbone of our democracy, as organizers, voters, part of the country’s civic infrastructure.

She paid the price for her participation. Along the way, she turned her pain into purpose.

Before her arrest and prosecution, Mason had been a lifelong voter, encouraged by her mother, who kept voter registration cards in her Bible. One of the cards — and the right of democracy that came with it — became Mason’s inheritance when she turned 18.

In the days leading up to the 2016 election, Mason’s mother reminded her constantly to make sure she voted. That year, Mason would be voting for the first time since serving a five-year sentence for tax fraud. She was on supervised release at the time, but Mason said she did not realize her status meant she was ineligible to vote under Texas law. So on Election Day, Mason left work and showed up at her polling place.

Workers told her they couldn’t find a record of her on the voter rolls. They explained that she could cast a provisional ballot and, if her credentials were valid, her vote would be counted. Mason showed her identification, voted and left, pretty much as she had done in election after election.

She is among the hundreds of thousands of Americans who cast a provisional ballot in states across the country. The ballots are a means of ensuring that no eligible voter is turned away at the polls; if a voter’s eligibility is in question, they are able to cast their vote, and election workers determine whether that vote should count. Ineligible votes are not counted, and thousands are thrown out each cycle, as Mason’s was.

Election Day 2016 was the beginning of a nightmare that would cost Mason her freedom, jeopardize her livelihood and home, and challenge her relationship to democracy. There were sleepless nights and days filled with crying. Mason’s mother got sick; Mason lost jobs and nearly lost her home while she was in prison.

The experience — all over just trying to cast her vote — initially left Mason soured on what she once took pride in as her civic duty.

“The message was: If you fill out a provisional ballot, you go to jail,” Mason said. “That scares people if they’re not sure. The whole step is designed for when you’re unsure.”

Mason had done what her country tells good citizens to do: to show up, be part of your community, and cast your ballot. Her experience tested her faith in the system, and her uncertainty was weaponized as evidence that was used against her. Questions of access — whether your registration is valid, if your polling place is convenient, if you’re eligible to vote — became a question of safety.

She vowed never to vote again. But after sitting with the gravity of what had happened to her, Mason began to feel differently.

“I realized that’s exactly what they want me to do,” Mason said.

She remembered the dedication to voting that her mother and grandmother instilled in her, and Black Americans’ long, painful and complicated relationship with democracy. All of this was something she learned early, like how to wash the dishes.

For Mason, voting went from being her duty to being her calling. She couldn’t let her case scare countless others into hesitation about exercising their rights. Rather than becoming deterred, Mason became more determined than ever — not only for her vote to count, but to help others do the same and not to let anyone silence her.

In 2020, she founded Crystal Mason: The Fight Against Voter Suppression, a voter advocacy and education organization. She makes the pitch to her fellow citizens that their voice matters.

“This is the only way we’re going to see anything that’s going to be justice for us, is if we get out there and we vote,” Mason tells them. “You can make that change. You can make a difference.”

Year after year, our democracy asks Black women like Mason to show up, to save democracy, to vote and turn out their communities, to believe in the system that does not always deliver for them. But what does democracy owe Black women? An institution worthy of their faith, one that feels safe, fair — and where a mistake isn’t catastrophic.

“Our democracy should be for Black women,” Mason said. “I just feel like at this point right now,  they should really see the value that we have and listen.”

The weekend after she received the news of her acquittal being upheld, Mason was in the community, helping to register older voters and making sure they have a plan to vote in the midterms.

Mason has also returned to being a regular voter, and said she is “definitely ready” to cast her ballot this year. She said she still believes in democracy, even after her place in it was threatened.

“You have to,” Mason said, smiling. “That’s the only way you’re going to stay sane, trusting that this is going to work, once we get the right people in office.”

Black women have long been resilient when confronted with adversity: when the president questions their intelligence, when they work to succeed in the face of systemic economic discrimination, when they run up against laws enacted to target where and how they can vote. Our democracy is right to admire them; it is wrong to perpetuate the conditions that require them to summon their strength as a condition of citizenship.

Recent polling from The Highland Project on Black women voters showed that despite being dissatisfied with the direction of the country, they are highly motivated to vote in November; 87 percent of those polled said the Supreme Court’s decision this spring to gut the Voting Rights Act make them more motivated to vote.

But the forces that make it harder for some to participate are resilient, too. Tarrant County, where Mason lives, just slashed more than 90 precincts ahead of this year’s midterm elections. It is the state’s third most populous county.

Recently, a most unlikely canvasser knocked on Mason’s door: Susan Sorrells, wife of Phil Sorrells, the Tarrant County district attorney who prosecuted Mason and was running for reelection. Suddenly, Mason found herself face to face with a woman asking her to vote for the man who sought to take her vote away.

“I wanted to say, ‘Do you know who I am?’” Mason said. “Your husband called me a voter fraudster. I just thought, ‘Wow. Is this what we’re doing?’”

But Mason didn’t say any of that. Instead, she nodded politely, took the paperwork from Sorrells’ hand and shut the door.