The logic that I can follow is you cannot vote twice; by believing that you can vote by text and follow through with that action you have been "deprived" of your right to vote.

> “What Mackey allegedly did to interfere with this process – by soliciting voters to cast their ballots via text – amounted to nothing short of vote theft."

> Mackey conspired with others to use social media platforms, including Twitter, to disseminate fraudulent messages designed to encourage supporters of one of the presidential candidates (the “Candidate”) to “vote” via text message or social media, a legally invalid method of voting

There is a mens rea element though isn't there? If you post this with the intent of preventing people from voting versus posting something you think is factual versus posting something with the intent being to make a joke. The first would be illegal, the second wouldn't, the third maybe (if you had reason to believe that people would interpret it as being factual prior to your posting it).

It can be hard to understand complex legal issues. Let me explain.

He was convicted of US Code 18 Section 241 which describes 2 or more people conspiring to deprive victims of their constitutional rights.

Simply tweeting something that is false wouldn't count, and it seems that even intentionally tweeting misinformation wouldn't break this law unless you were conspiring with others to do it.

Well now it totally makes sense

> even intentionally tweeting misinformation wouldn't break this law unless you were conspiring with others to do it.

Okay, but it has to break some law. You can't be convicted of conspiracy if you're conspiring to do something which is legal. If you actually completed the act you and the other conspirators planned, and this act was not a crime, then your conspiracy can't be a crime either.

This is more like going to people's homes and collecting their ballots than anything you've posted. You've eliminated all nuance in your replies.

If you think you see a fire in a crowded building and you say something, even if there isn't a fire, it's way different than going into a building and causing chaos because you want to cause chaos

Where does this meme say you can vote by SMS? It says "Vote from home", which is definitely possible given all the mail-in voting in 2020. I "voted from home" in 2020, and so did a lot of other people.

In the bottom left? Where it specifically asks you to "Text 'Hillary' to 59925"?

That doesn't say "text to vote". It says, as you note, "Text 'Hillary' to 59925". This just looks like ambiguous/poorly worded campaign copy. Is that illegal, though? Apparently there's another image with additional text on it?

It is, at the very least, impersonation.

And https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35395239 (https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/q60/uploads/2021/0...) is even more explicit about their intent to defraud.

I guess I’m not following (and that second link is broken for me).

Suppose I create a positive meme about a campaign, which obviously happens a lot. Is that still “impersonation”? I find what Mackey did really unsavory and gross but I’m not really understanding what the principle being applied here actually is. Are meme/jokes/absurdities about political campaigns not legal?

Hm, I tried mirroring it now then... https://imgur.com/0znBo7v

Anyway, they are both clearly designed to imply an affiliation with the campaign. It's one thing to state that you support X, it's another thing to claim that you are speaking for or represent them.

And claiming this in obvious satire is now illegal? 2024 is coming up real quick, so everyone probably needs to understand the ground rules that this case changed.

And what happens when you text to 59925? Did you read the whole thing? Would a busy person, who lives in an area likely to have hours long lines to vote be relieved to text that number and receive a reply that says "Thanks for Voting" bother to look further?

Is your point that only busy people (and Clinton voters) are stupid enough to think you can vote by text, therefore they were disenfranchised by this meme?

Look at it this way: laws aren't domain-specific. Doing a crime by tweet might sound "funny" to you, but scamming ppl by phone or in person or via tweet is all the same crime.

You're not aware of the general difference between lying and fraud? You think all forms of deception are either all legal or all illegal, and that's how granular our laws are?

Are you not in support of, or not aware of contexts like medicine, commerce, elections being sensitive enough to have laws around false or fraudulent behavior?

I still don't understand what you don't understand. Twitter is supposed to be a free square for crime?

> You're not aware of the general difference between lying and fraud?

Fraud is a financial crime, and Mackey was not convicted of fraud.

Forget the constitution. Did you even read the law?

I'm sure it wasn't you who did it, but cropping the example to remove some of the salient information is misleading, and it seems you were taken in. From the DOJ press release (duplicating the criminal complaint):

[...] The ad stated: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,” “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925,” and “Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.” The fine print at the bottom of the deceptive image stated: “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by Hillary For President 2016.” The tweet included the typed hashtag “#ImWithHer,” a slogan frequently used by Hillary Clinton. On or about and before Election Day 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or some derivative to the 59925 text number, which had been used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and his co-conspirators.

Certainly, this was amusing to those involved in it, and the basic idea is defensible as a joke. But if you keep adding layer upon layer of detail to make your joke more plausible, while also demonstrating intent by making an electronic record of your conversations where you say that your goal is to get fewer people to vote, the excuse starts to wear thin.

Admittedly, the people who fell for this and were deceived into 'voting' by text or thinking that they were signing up for campaign messages may have been a bit stupid. But the whole point of putting advisories and disclaimers in the fine print is to provide people with a credible channel of information that's independent of the exhortation in an advertisement. It's like the difference between teasing someone for being naive and actively exploiting them.

There were multiple images created. AFAIK it wasn't cropped. Source: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/right-wing-twitter-trol...