Hello, and happy Thursday,
Last week, I spoke on the phone with Pamela Moses, the Black Lives Matter activist who was sentenced to six years in prison for trying to register to vote. It was the first interview Moses has given since being released, and I found it revelatory.
I’ve been following Moses’ case for the last few months, but we had only really talked at length once previously. Before I called her, I found myself thinking back to our first conversation, in early December, when Moses explained how no one had ever told her she was ineligible to vote. “I’m a person that relies on paperwork … I go by what’s in writing,” she told me then. It was an offhand comment that foreshadowed the turning point in her case: ultimately it was paperwork – a document that prosecutors failed to turn over – that helped her get a new trial.
In our conversation last week, Moses was unequivocal in her belief that she was targeted both because of her race and because of her activism. She has long been critical of several local government officials, including judges, the election commission and Amy Weirich, the district attorney who is prosecuting her case.
“It’s a scare tactic, what they did to me,” she told me. “I believe, not only if I wasn’t Black, but if my name wasn’t Pamela Moses, this probably never would have been a case.”
The reason Moses lost the right to vote in the first place was because she had been convicted of a felony in 2015 (she pleaded guilty to charges of stalking, tampering with evidence, theft and perjury). She said she’s spoken with other people who have felony convictions who are now unsure if they should vote. “If you silence the loudest person that’s screaming, ‘Hey Black people, go vote, don’t vote for her, remove her from office,’ then you eliminate the opposition,” she said.
I also asked Moses what she made of one of the few public statements Weirich has given about the case, in which Weirich said Moses bore some responsibility for her long sentence because she refused to accept a plea deal that didn’t involve prison time. “I decided to use my constitutional right. What is wrong with people using their constitutional right for a trial by jury?” Moses said.
She also described her disbelief when prosecutors and the judge overseeing her case accused her of deceiving a probation officer into signing a form indicating she was done with probation. “I was like, wow – I need to go to magic school or something. I’m the new Houdini. I’ve got that much power to trick somebody I’ve never met, never seen in my life into doing something just by walking in the place? You know? No.”
A document obtained by the Guardian showed that probation officials investigated the incident almost immediately afterwards and found that the probation officer made a good-faith error in signing off on the document. Even though the officer’s error helped set Moses’ case in motion, she made it clear that she thought he shouldn’t be blamed.
“I don’t like how everybody is portraying that supervisor as a bad person. That man did his job,” she said. “I don’t think that I tricked anybody and I don’t think that man did anything other than what he could do based on the information that he had in front of him.”
I was also struck by the clear toll the case had taken on Moses. While she talked about how she’s enjoyed spending time with her 13-year-old son, taking him to school and watching Netflix with him, she also said how anxious she was, and how upset she was that her dog died while she was in prison. “Being with my son has been a great feeling, because he’s actually happier than I am. I’m not gonna lie to you, I’ve been really perplexed. I’ve had a lot of anxiety,” she told me. “ I’m worried because these charges haven’t gone away.”
Her next court appearance is currently set for 25 April, and Moses’ legal team wants the district attorney to either drop the case or appoint a special prosecutor.
Also worth watching …
Texas officials rejected around 13% of all mail-in ballots during the primary, a staggeringly high number.
Georgia Republicans advanced a bill that would give the Georgia Bureau Investigation additional power over election crimes
Florida Republicans approved a measure that eliminates the term “drop box” in state law – a cosmetic move that one county says will cost between $50,000 and $60,000 to implement
The Wisconsin Elections Commission declined to punish Republicans who posed as fake electors in the state.
And a little news from the Guardian …
I’m really thrilled to share that one of our visual explainers about gerrymandering was recognized with an award of excellence from the Society for News Design. When we envisioned this story, we wanted to break down the complexities of gerrymandering into an easy digestible way. My stellar colleague Andrew Witherspoon on our visuals team did just that.
