HOUSTON — Hervis Rogers eagerly answered questions posed by a TV news reporter. The 62-year-old Houston resident had just waited more than six hours outside Texas Southern University to vote in the state’s presidential primary in March 2020.

What You Need To Know

  • Hervis Rogers was arrested and charged with two counts of illegal voting, a felony

  • The charges stem from ballots that Rogers cast on March 3, 2020, and on Nov. 6, 2018, while he was still on parole and not legally permitted to vote

  • The felony counts carry a possible sentence of 40 years in prison

  • Rogers is accused of a non-violent offense, and his attorneys say he believed he was eligible to vote; he was held on $100,000 bail

"My point is this: Don't complain,” Rogers said as he exited the polling station around 1 a.m. “If you get out and vote, then you can say, ‘well at least I tried to do my part.’ ”

Last Wednesday, he was arrested and charged with two counts of illegal voting, a felony. According to court documents, the charges stem from ballots that Rogers cast on March 3, 2020, and on Nov. 6, 2018, while still on parole and not legally permitted to vote. The felony counts carry a possible sentence of 40 years in prison. And since Rogers has a prior conviction, he could receive an even higher sentence.

In 1995, when Rogers was about 36 years old, he was convicted of burglary and was incarcerated for nine years. He was released on parole in 2004. But in Texas, parolees are ineligible to vote. Rogers' parole ended in June 2020, at which time his voting rights would have been restored.

Rogers is accused of a non-violent offense, and his attorneys say he believed he was eligible to vote. He was held on $100,000 bail and released on Sunday night after The Bail Project, a national nonprofit organization that pays bail for people in need, paid his way out of jail. Rogers is now home with his family, a spokesperson for the Bail Project confirmed to Spectrum News 1.

Critics of the state say that Rogers’ arrest was motivated by politics, not election integrity. Despite voting in the Texas Democratic primary more than a year ago, Rogers was only charged this week as the Texas Legislature starts a special session where pending bills on new voting restrictions and cash bail are two top agenda priorities.

The House and Senate bills would expand the use of cash bail and restrict the work of nonprofit bail funds, while legislation on new voting restrictions would ban the distribution of mail-in ballot applications and 24-hour voting, among other things.

“Voting restrictions and the expansion of the cash bail system go hand in hand,” said Robin Steinberg, Founder and CEO of The Bail Project. “Mr. Hervis’s situation is a textbook example of how these systems intersect to undermine our fundamental rights and target minorities. In their fevered desire to suppress the turnout of people of color, the Texas Attorney General has engaged in political theatre, while using the bail system to send a targeted message of fear.”

Bail reformers see Rogers' arrest as proof of a broken system

Pamela Young is a member of the grassroots group United Fort Worth, which started a bail fund called the Criminal Justice Action Team. The fund started at the outbreak of COVID-19 when protesters were routinely jailed in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

A bill currently being considered in the Texas special legislative session would prohibit groups like United Fort Worth from bailing out people like Rogers — non-violent offenders who have a prior arrest. Young and other group members were in Austin last week to protest and testify against the new bail laws.

“It's basically saying that if you're accused of any violent crime or if you've ever been convicted of a violent crime in your lifetime, you are no longer eligible for a [personal recognizance] bond or a moneyless bond,” she said of her protest in Austin. “That's detrimental because there are so many people who may have committed a ‘violent crime’ at some point in their life many years ago, being convicted of it, and now they’ve moved on — not to mention how disproportionately this will impact people of color, especially Black and brown people, because they are over-policed, profiled, targeted and falsely accused more than anyone. And often, they do not have the resources to fight those things.

“So here you are with this record of something that maybe you did, maybe you didn't, but now it's causing you to have to sit in jail for what, months, maybe years on end until your number is called for a trial, because you don't have the money to bail out. No, that is unconstitutional. And we need more of the Democrats in the House and in the Senate to understand the implications of money bail on their constituents.”

Rogers, she said, is the perfect example of a person who is not a threat to the community but held behind bars on an unreasonable bond.

“For one, they’re looking to make an example out of these individuals so they can strike fear in the hearts of would-be voters,” she said. “Again, back to the issue of the vast numbers of Black and brown people who have been caught up in the criminal legal system. They want to strike fear in their hearts so that they stay out of the voting pool.

“Number two, it is a dog whistle to the Republican base — to the far-right wing of the Republican base that Donald Trump continuously whistles to,” she continued. “That's what this is. It's a rallying cry to them to say, ‘Hey, we're still in this,’ and here's some more red meat for you to get excited and motivated behind so that we can hold on to any little slivers of power that we have remaining. They're scared.”

Republicans are pushing for tougher election security in many states

Texas' election code states that a person convicted of a felony can register to vote and participate in elections only once their sentence — including parole — is fully completed. Texas’ election laws also stipulate that a person must knowingly vote illegally to be guilty of a crime.

The Sentencing Project, a criminal-justice nonprofit, estimates that 5.2 million Americans remain disenfranchised because of felony convictions, a disproportionate number of them Black. According to a report the group released last year, over 6.2% of the adult African American population is disenfranchised, compared with 1.7% of the non-African American population. In Texas, 2.8% of voters cannot vote because of felony convictions.

Experts say that disparities in sentencing can make felony voting laws inherently discriminatory against minorities and people with low incomes. And the process for former felons to return to the voter rolls can be confusing, with muddled and frequently changing rules, making it difficult for people trying to vote legally to know what to do.

Texas’ attorney general, Ken Paxton, who is under investigation for professional misconduct after he challenged President Biden’s win in court, brought the charges against Rogers. He has made it a mission of his office to prosecute voter fraud cases, which are very rare in the United States and tend to be minor mistakes when they do happen.

“Hervis is a felon rightly barred from voting under TX law,” Paxton wrote on Twitter. “I prosecute voter fraud everywhere we find it!”

Republicans in Texas and other battleground states have been pushing aggressively to restrict voting laws since former President Donald Trump began making false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. On Thursday, Republicans in the Texas Legislature presented plans to overhaul the state’s election apparatus for a second time this year. They outlined a raft of proposed new restrictions on voting access that would be among the most far-reaching election laws passed this year.