Rosa Ortega stirred herself awake at the sound of a prison guard yelling in her dreams. “It’s just a nightmare,” Oscar Sherman assured her as the pair rested in his low-slung apartment complex in a desolate part of town. “It’s over now.” “My mind’s not right,” Ortega said later that afternoon. “I have nightmares. I can’t combine foods. I’m always on top of everything, but my brain hurts. It can’t stop thinking about the situation.” The situation is that Ortega, 37, voted illegally and has become the national face of voter fraud, a crime that President Trump and other Republicans believe is an epidemic endangering the integrity of American elections, even though no evidence supports the claim.
Mexican born and Texas raised, Ortega voted in Dallas County after filling out a registration form saying she was a U.S. citizen. She did the same after she moved one county over, which led detectives to knock on her door. Ortega told them she thought she could vote because she has a green card. Isn’t that enough?
It isn’t. After successfully convicting her on voter fraud charges, Texas Assistant Attorney General Jonathan White asked the jurors to deliver a punishment they thought was fair.
Before Ortega, “fair” usually resulted in a minor penalty — community service or probation. In the 38 illegal voting cases Texas has resolved since 2005, only one defendant received more than three years in prison. And that was a public official who admitted to registering noncitizens to help her win an election. But by February 2017, the notion of what was fair had changed.
Full Article: She voted illegally. But was the punishment too harsh? – The Washington Post.