Memester Douglass Mackey gets 7 months in jail over 2016 election posts

Social media personality Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn, received seven months in prison on Wednesday over 2016 posts he made encouraging supporters of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to cast their votes via text.

"Between September 2016 and November 2016, Mackey conspired with other influential Twitter users and with members of private online groups to use social media platforms, including Twitter, to disseminate fraudulent messages that encouraged supporters of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to “vote” via text message or social media, which was legally invalid," the Department of Justice stated in a press release announcing the sentence.

A jury convicted Mackey in March of this year over the effort, which he had claimed was merely a meme. One post prosecutors highlighted bore an image of a woman with a sign supporting Clinton and including the message "Avoid the Line. Vote from Home. Text 'Hillary' to 59925[.] Vote for Hillary and be a part of history."

Other posts he made mimicked the formatting of authentic Clinton campaign ads.

Mackey had attempted to argue the effort was merely a prank, though prosecutors at the time highlighted that the number to which he directed people was real and had been set up to receiving incoming messages.

"This wasn’t about changing votes. This was about vaporizing votes, making them disappear," Assistant US Attorney Turner Buford said following his conviction.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter.