Fraud charges dropped against man accused of voting illegally in 2020

CNN
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Voter fraud charges against a Texas man accused of voting illegally in the 2020 Democratic primary were dropped Friday.

Hervis Rogers said he waited more than six hours to vote in the March 2020 Super Tuesday primary in Houston, and was the last person to vote at a polling location on the campus of Texas Southern University.

Then in June 2021, the Texas attorney general’s office charged Rogers with two counts of illegal voting in the November 6, 2018, general and special elections and the March 3, 2020, Democratic primary election despite being on felony parole for a 25-year sentence for burglary.

He was previously convicted of felony burglary charges in 1989 and 1995, according to the indictment. Because he was on felony parole, he was ineligible to vote under Texas law, according to the Texas attorney general’s office.

In Texas, ex-felons are permitted to vote once they have completed both their sentences and all the terms of their supervised release, such as parole.

On Friday, Montgomery County District Judge Lisa Michalk dismissed the criminal charges against Rogers.

In a statement released by his attorneys at the Texas ACLU, Rogers said, “I am thankful that justice has been done. It has been horrible to go through this, and I am so glad my case is over. I look forward to being able to get back to my life.”

At the time of his arrest, ACLU officials told CNN that Rogers did not know he was voting illegally.

“We are thrilled that justice has been done for Mr. Rogers. He never should have been prosecuted in the first place, and this ruling allows him to put this traumatic ordeal behind him and move on with his life,” said Tommy Buser-Clancy, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Texas.

The Texas attorney general’s office has not yet commented on the judge’s decision to dismiss the criminal charges.

The night Rogers voted, he told CNN that he had not been deterred by the incredibly long lines at his polling location and was going to wait as long as it took to cast his ballot.

“I figured, like, it was my duty to vote. I wanted to get my vote in to voice my opinion. And I wasn’t going to let nothing stop me. So I waited it out,” Rogers said in March 2020.

He had been the last person to cast his ballot at his polling center located at Texas Southern University, a historically Black university in Houston, CNN previously reported.