The sentence for Ms. Ortega, who was brought to this country by her mother as an infant, “shows how serious<br />Texas is about keeping its elections secure,” Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement.<br />She didn’t know she wasn’t legal,” said Ms. Ortega’s lawyer, Clark Birdsall, who once oversaw voter fraud prosecutions in neighboring Dallas County.<br />As a Dallas County resident, she registered to vote and later cast ballots in elections in 2012 and 2014, her lawyer, Mr. Birdsall, said.<br />Mr. Birdsall said Mr. Paxton’s office had been prepared to dismiss all charges against<br />Ms. Ortega if she agreed to testify on voting procedures before the Texas Legislature.<br />Ms. Ortega’s conviction looks to be an early volley in a reinvigorated partisan war over<br />voting rights — a war led in Texas by Mr. Paxton, who has crusaded against voter fraud.<br />Illegal Voting Gets Texas Woman 8 Years in Prison, and Certain Deportation -<br />Despite repeated statements by Republican political leaders<br />that American elections are rife with illegal voting, credible reports of fraud have been hard to find and convictions rarer still.
