Douglass Mackey, the social media influencer known as “Ricky Vaughn,” was sentenced Wednesday to seven months in prison for falsely assuring supporters of Hillary Clinton they could cast their vote in the 2016 presidential election through text messages or social media posts.
Mackey was prosecuted under the Ku Klux Klan Act that was enacted during the Reconstruction era in response to efforts by the KKK to prevent recently emancepated Blacks from voting.
Mackey was 26 years old in 2015 when he began posting on Twitter under the pseudonym “Ricky Vaughn,” amassing 51,000 followers on Twitter and ranking among the “most influential voices” posting about the 2016 presidential election, according to a list compiled by M.I.T.
Federal prosecutors in New York said Mackey was intent on originating hashtags designed to “cause as much chaos as possible” by creating “controversy … for the sole purpose of disparaging Hillary Clinton.”
At 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 1, 2016, Mackey published the first tweet that falsely announced that people could register their vote by texting on their phones, according to trial testimony. Additional tweets followed.
That seems like a wholly inadequate sentence when you contrast it with the case of the woman in Texas who got 5 years for casting a provisional ballot in 2016 when she didn’t know she wasn’t eligible to vote. Wikipedia article outlining the details of her case and appeals..
Five years for not knowing you couldn’t vote and casting a provisional ballot vs seven months for launching a nationwide internet campaign to disenfranchise people through deception? What a sad state of affairs.
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I’m not OP, but I’m pretty sure that’s the case in question. It was such a miscarriage of justice. Absolutely horrifying and shameful that it didn’t get more coverage and outrage than it did.
It’s just business as usual for America, most non violent prisoners of any country, ever.
Meanwhile, Tina Peters resisted arrest and tried to meddle with an election and she still has not been given the years and years she deserves to rot in prison.
Also vs walking around freely and continuing to campaign after trying to literally destroy the literal country via literal insurrection and literally selling literal government secrets and literally getting literal intelligence agents killed and then literally doxxing the literal judge who literally just approved a literal gag order but then getting to sit in court and act like you did nothing wrong and LITERALLY NEARLY HALF OF THIS LITERALLY BROKEN COUNTRY FILLED WITH LITERAL NAZIS CONTINUE TO SUPPORT YOU AND LITERALLY CALL THEMSELVES BOTH “LITERAL NAZIS” AND THE HEROES OF THIS STORY WHILE ALSO LITERALLY EQUATING THE LITERAL ANTI-FASCISTS TO METAPHORICAL NAZIS.
God damn I fucking hate this narrative…
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Holy shit, the level of literal-ness in your post is completely obfuscating your point, if you even have one.
The stark reality is that it won’t even take a lot of tax payer money to fix the US’s education system. It’s just in a shit state by design. You can’t easily fool educated citizens. It’s awful by design and thanks to years of budget cuts, further inflating the war machine we call the United States of America.
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Yeah, but she was caught Voting While Blah, obviously she had to pay by going to prison for 5 years.
/s
[Mackey was prosecuted under the Ku Klux Klan Act]
That is pretty cool.
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It is illegal to profit from crimes. The government can take all his money if he tried to.
It took SEVEN YEARS to sentence this guy. Maybe if he was sentenced before the next election took place there’d be some sort of minimal deterrent effect, but this is ridiculous.
I tell Republicans to make sure they vote at the polls and avoid vote by mail.
Good. Let’s get more asshats who try to wreck our democracy in prison.
On the other hand, there are a bunch of STUPID Americans who believed him. That speaks volumes about your education system.
Our education system is pretty bad, especially as it pertains to explaining the way the government works. However, some people are indeed just stupid. You can educate them all you want and it doesn’t sink in.
Should’ve been over a year, which would be a felony and impact his right to vote.
Remember the days when the internet was this wild west where you could do whatever you want be totally Anonymous are long gone. If you troll in the wrong way you are going to jail.
Oh no! But MAH FREEZED PEACH! PUBLIC TOWN SQUARE, etc…
To borrow the parlance of his contemporaries, what a cuck.
Free Douglass he was just messing around
This is insane. He was trolling idiots. Even if their your idiots, even if he disgusts you, wait until the next GOP administration goes after the leftist trolls who also posted similar stuff, or even much more beign posts.
The bar is set, and it will only go lower. This will not end with the only the suffering of those you dislike.
This is a bad, really really bad, precedent to be set.
Can’t wait for all of your outrage posts when @randygdub is sent to Gitmo by President Boebert.
Giving people false information about how to vote is not trolling. It’s election interference and voter manipulation.
The DOJ was not even able to provide a SINGLE EXAMPLE of anyone who didn’t vote by ballot because of this morons trolling.
The precedent is now set at ZERO victims.
I’m baffled at how you cannot see now the right can, and will, use this to go after leftists on social media.
“You should let criminal acts go unpunished so your side can do them too” is certainly a hot take
“Let’s not criminalize trolling, because it won’t stop with this guy, and the right is a lot more vindictive” would be a more adept description of my point
Nah, there’s some things you can’t joke about, misinformation around voting is one of them.
That’s fine if that is your moral position, but we’re talking about a legal precedent here. Like I said, see how much restraint the next GOP administration shows to left-wing trolls.
“It’s okay to commit crimes as long as the victims are stupid.”
Oh he was “just trolling”?
Double the sentence. Immature twat.
Memes are violence. End them at all costs.
I bet you supported the Patriot Act.
The patriot act has nothing about punishing dumbasses for being trolling twats. Try again.
Unintended consequences. It’s like you think I care about this one guy, I don’t. I care about this NEW power and how it will absolutely be ABUSED by the next Republican DOJ.
ZERO proven victims.
So he’s convicted on the NEW precedent that memes cause criminal harm, even if that harm can’t be proven with a single victim.
Gee. Can’t see how that could possibly go wrong.
You know what’s not a protected class? Being trans.
Do you think a GOP attorney general might go after makers of pro-trans memes? What memes do you think President MTG or Boebert would send her attorney general after?
Or do you think this will only get used against “bad guy meme makers”?
Tampering with elections is illegal. How are you this dense?
Look, I’m sure this guy is a complete douche. But the DOJ just gained a whole lot more power by using a KKK era law to criminalize memes.
Illegal memes, and the DOJ was not even required to provide a single victim. Think about, or don’t.
I bet you’d probably be happy if Jonathan Swift had been locked up as well. After all, cannibalism is illegal.
