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On Oct. 18, Douglass Mackey was sentenced to seven months in prison for his role in a conspiracy to interfere with potential voters’ right to vote in the 2016 presidential election. The far-right influencer, who posted under the pseudonym “Ricky Vaughn,” attempted to trick voters into believing they could vote by text message.
Straight Arrow News contributor Ben Weingarten finds it deeply concerning that a meme could lead to such a severe punishment. He argues that this not only jeopardizes our First Amendment rights but also establishes a troubling precedent for the potential jailing of former President Trump.
If you care about free speech, if you care about the rule of law, if you care about the ability to retain anything resembling a republic, this straight-out-of-the-Soviet Union case should outrage you.
The case concerns Douglass Mackey, a social media troll on the Right, who rose to prominence during the 2016 election. Now, let me preface this by saying I understand Mackey may have written some nasty things over the years. This commentary is not a defense of his words or character, but it is a defense of his right to speak freely, a defense our legal system did not provide.
A federal judge just sent Mackey to prison for seven months for a satirical tweet. What did the tweet say? Well, it depicted a Black woman in front of an “African Americans for Hillary” sign with text reading “Avoid the line, vote from home and text Hillary to 59925,” along with “Vote for Hillary and be a part of history” and the hashtag “I’m with her.” At bottom, it read, in part, “Paid for by Hillary for President 2016.”
According to prosecutors, on or about and before election day 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted Hillary or some derivative to the text number. We don’t know what percentage of these people were eligible to vote, whether they were actually trying to vote, or if they would have even seen the post had the media not extensively covered the tweet. But no matter, the Feds indicted Mackay for conspiracy against rights stemming from his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote. This via a meme.
