Right-wing meme-maker Douglass Mackey, known online as “Ricky Vaughn,” received a seven-month prison sentence on Wednesday for “interfering” in the 2016 presidential election with his social media posts. Mackey’s memes encouraged Hillary Clinton voters to “vote from home” via text—an offense the Department of Justice and US District Judge Ann M. Donnelly considered “an assault on our democracy.”
Mackey, 34, was first charged with election interference and “conspiracy to deny rights” one week after President Joe Biden took office, almost exactly four years after the 2016 election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Under the pseudonym Ricky Vaughn, Mackey ran a pro-Trump Twitter account that primarily posted political memes.
The post at the center of his legal troubles featured a Black woman in front of an “African Americans for Hillary” sign with text that read “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home! Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925.”
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According to prosecutors, this image represented a “scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.” The Department of Justice further alleged that Mackey had conspired with other social media users to provoke, mislead, and, in some cases, deceive voters in the 2016 presidential election.”
Government sources report that nearly 4,900 people texted the number between September and November 2016, but it is unclear how many of them were actually misled or if any sent the text in lieu of voting.
Mackey faced a years-long legal battle, but his First Amendment defense eventually failed, resulting in his conviction in March 2023.
Judge Donnelly, an Obama appointee, oversaw Mackey’s sentencing on Wednesday, slapping the former Twitter troll with a seven-month stint in federal prison. Donnelly further stated that this sentence did not amount to political persecution, saying “You are not being sentenced for your political beliefs or for expressing those beliefs.”
Mackey’s defense has pointed to dozens of other posts from 2016 and before in which people on both sides of the aisle made similar jokes and suffered no consequences.
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