Pamela Moses, the founder of the Black Lives Matter Memphis chapter and a former Democratic mayoral candidate, received a six-year and one-day prison sentence for illegally registering to vote, the New York Post reports.

The activist was ineligible to vote due to previous felony convictions in 2015 but she said she was unaware she permanently forfeited her voting rights when she pleaded guilty at the time, The Washington Post reports. 

The corrections department and the county election commission approved her 2019 voter registration application and verified that she completed her probation, thereby restoring her voting privileges. Officials later admitted they made a mistake and her voting privileges had not been restored.

The activist was subsequently charged with trying to illegally register to vote. During her sentencing hearing, Judge W. Mark Ward said the activist was deceptive about her status with the probation department.

“You tricked the probation department into giving you documents saying you were off probation,” Ward said in court, according to The Washington Post. 

Moses was on probation for seven years and was prohibited from voting in Tennessee, but said she "relied on the election commission" and asserts that she didn't "falsify anything," WREG reports.

"All I did was try to get my rights to vote back the way the people at the election commission told me and the way the clerk did,” she said at the sentencing hearing, according to WREG.

Janai Nelson, the associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told Rachel Maddow on MSNBC that Moses' case "points to everything that is wrong in our democracy." 

Moses' attorney, Bede Anyanwu, is set to appeal his client's case.

"This case is one about the disparity in sentencing and punishment — and one that shouldn't have happened. It's all very, very disturbing." Anyanwu said to the Washington Post.

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