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.

    • rurutheguru@lemmings.world
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      1 year ago

      Holy shit, the level of literal-ness in your post is completely obfuscating your point, if you even have one.

      The stark reality is that it won’t even take a lot of tax payer money to fix the US’s education system. It’s just in a shit state by design. You can’t easily fool educated citizens. It’s awful by design and thanks to years of budget cuts, further inflating the war machine we call the United States of America.