A Black Lives Matter activist was sentenced to prison after being convicted last year for illegally registering to vote.
BLM activist Pamela Moses was sentenced to six years and one day in prison on Monday following her November 2021 conviction for illegally registering to vote in Tennessee. But some are pushing back on the conviction, alleging it was based on an error or that the punishment is too severe for the crime.
“Elected officials have used incredible amounts of resources in a time when there’s a backlog in this justice system unlike any we’ve seen before. They use resources to try and … convict this woman for trying to vote,” said Josh Spickler, executive director of the criminal reform group Just City, at a Friday press conference.
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Moses’s conviction originated from an error in the state’s voting records. The activist pleaded guilty to two felonies and three misdemeanors in 2015 after stalking and harassing a local judge, which led to her being placed on probation for seven years. These actions rendered her permanently ineligible to vote in Tennessee. Moses said she was unaware of her loss of voter rights, which is why she attempted to register to vote in 2019.
When Moses attempted to run for Memphis mayor in 2019, election officials told her that she would not be allowed to appear on the ballot due to her felony. Moses was uncertain, so she approached a local judge and inquired into her eligibility. A local probation officer signed a document confirming that her probation had ended, but a representative for the corrections department emailed election officials a day later, stating there was an error on Moses’s certificate and that she was still serving probation, according to the Guardian.
Moses said she never actually voted but only registered unknowingly, faulting officials for failing to inform her about her ineligibility after beginning her probation.
“I relied on the election commission because those are the people who were supposed to know what you know you’re supposed to do,” Moses told News Channel 3 in December of last year. “And I found out that they didn’t know.”
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Moses founded the Black Lives Matter chapter in Memphis.
