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Twitter influencer sentenced to seven months for trying to trick Clinton supporters into voting by text (abcnews.go.com)

submitted 1 year ago by deconstruct@lemm.ee to c/politics@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] ZeroCool@feddit.ch 215 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] thefartographer@lemm.ee 25 points 1 year ago

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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this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023

431 points (98.2% liked)

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