Posted on 10/18/2023 11:26:15 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Douglass Mackey, who ran a Twitter account with over 58,000 followers, was sentenced to seven months in prison Wednesday for a meme he shared on social media during the 2016 election.
Mackey was convicted by a jury in March of conspiring to deprive others of their right to vote, which carried a potential sentence of up to 10 years. The meme that led to his conviction was a fake flier encouraging Clinton supporters to vote from home via text message.
“Avoid the line. Vote from home,” it stated. “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925. Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.”
Small text at the bottom of the flier notes that voting by text is “not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii.” (RELATED: Anti-Hillary Election ‘Meme’ Case Could Open The Floodgates To More Gov’t Censorship, Legal Experts Warn)
Prosecutors said that Mackey also belonged to private Twitter direct-message groups where he “coordinated” dissemination of misinformation “intended variously to provoke, mislead, and, in some cases, deceive voters in the 2016 presidential election” with others, according to the sentencing memo.
“Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred right to vote for the candidate of their choice in the 2016 Presidential Election,” United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace said after Mackey’s conviction in March. “Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote.”
First Amendment experts raised concerns earlier this year that the law used to convict Mackey could also be used to target any allegedly false statements about political or election related issues.
“It criminalizes conspiring to ‘injure’ or ‘oppress’ someone in the exercise of any constitutional right,” Aaron Terr, director of Public Advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in April. “If that vague language covers speech that deceives people into voting improperly, it raises the troubling possibility of the government also applying it to allegedly false statements about political issues or candidates that discourage people from voting, not just misrepresentations about the logistics of exercising the franchise.”
This charge and sentence looks prima facia unconstitutional.
I read somewhere else that what got this guy in trouble was his use of Hillary’s web address and her campaign symbol (the H at the bottom right).
“Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred right to vote for the candidate of their choice in the 2016 Presidential Election,” United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York...”
Mackey lived in Florida but he was charged in Brooklyn.
We need our Own Homeland !
In a functional and Constitutionally limited Republic with an equitable Justice system predicated upon natural law?
Correct.
We no longer have a system anywhere near that. Lysander Spooner was warning of this over a hundred years ago and for all that time... our cheese has slid slowly off the cracker.
... and here we are.
Obviously this will be appealed. This is blatantly unconstitutional.
So, in other words....Democrat voters are too stupid to know when Election Day is.
but there’s a yuck
He never stated that the vote would be counted in the election. If someone is that stupid, its better that their vote isn’t counted.
Re: 22 - the problem it seems to me is that it does not indicate it was a parody.
The system - a valid and enforceable Constitution - is there.
The people are not.
Never Trumpers extraordinaire. Other than the courts in DC, probably the most corrupt of the Fedzilla courts.
The words are there... But if no one follows them... Does it matter?
Dems and GOP both are pretty much off the chain and doing whatever the hell they please.
How do you cage the tiger again once it has figured out your lock is made of nothing but paper?
Entries for case:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59249282/united-states-v-mackey/
A paper from 1995 about using 18 USC 241 regarding attempting to supress voting rights:
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1193&context=uclf
If this situation was geared against Republican voters you know there would be NO charges. The weaponized DOJ continues its reign of terror against Republicans.
TRUTH: Jack Poso @ Posobiec
Doug Mackey made a meme called DraftOurDaughters to warn us that the world would be at war with Democrats in power
Now they’re throwing him in jail
https://rumble.com/v3q5tn4-human-events-with-jack-posobiec-ep.-585.html
Also numerous cases of libs making videos wearing MAGA hats telling Trump votes the wrong voting days, etc.
Denied free speech due to a fairly common theme in humor.
“The prosecutors should be made to prove the tweet successfully deceived actual humans in large enough numbers to matter.”
Should we (the public) learn to take care of ourselves or should government protect us by censorship.
I don’t have the answer except to say I would like for us to be “smart” rather than led. Maybe my frequently used quotation from Mother Theresa applies here: Wisdom is acquired by suffering.
The wisdom might be worth the suffering. Or maybe it’s that suffering today prevents greater future suffering.
He’s trying to raise money through givesendgo.com.
People stupid enough to believe we now vote thru
texting? It’s obvious satire.
Who’s next, Babylon Bee?
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