(PREFACE: as far as I can tell you can't see timestamps in messages, and the majority of this happened several days ago, so I'm taking my best guess at times and/or times-of-day and/or intervals - apologies if I misremember something about that)

Background - I have a significant other that lives in the same home, and both of us are active redditors. Would rather not go further into detail than that for obvious reasons, and I don't think it's relevant to the discussion. I don't plan to name that person here (though I specified in my discussion with the admin). We've cohabitated for over a decade, and both been active redditors for something like 5 years. Both of us use our local city subreddit as our primary sub, and the majority of our activity is there.

In the local subreddit, there was some huge drama over one of the main mods. Let's not go into that more than necessary. The relevant part is, there was a thread posted to that subreddit which was top of the sub for quite some time, got HEAVY traffic, and was probably something like half the activity in the entire sub at that point. My SO and I were both very active in the thread. The mod in question was, in my opinion, breaking reddiquette and moddiquette on a regular basis, so as one does when they feel someone is breaking reddiquette, I downvoted him. So did my SO.

That evening, I received a message from admin stating my account had been suspended for "engaging in vote manipulation". Specific text of the message:

"Your account has been suspended from Reddit for engaging in vote manipulation. The suspension will last for 2 day(s). Be sure to read up on the Reddit content policy to make sure you understand the rules for participating on Reddit. If you believe your account has been suspended in error, you can contact us by replying to this message."

At first I had no real understanding of why, but I expected that it probably had something to do with the recent mod meltdown thread I was involved in. Note that there's also some REALLY nasty history with that mod I alluded to in my messages to the admin, but frankly it's not really relevant to whether or not I broke a rule, so I won't go further into that.

So my initial message to admin (responding to the "you're suspended" message) with:

"My account has been suspended in error, so I am contacting you by replying to this message. I stand by every single up or down vote I've made, so feel free to point out where any "manipulation" has been in play. I await your response, and hope you're treating complaints against [REDACTED-MOD] with exactly the same level of attention as you're apparently treating the complaints by or on his behalf."

After no response for about 8 hours (I know, not long enough, but I didn't know admins were so backlogged at the time. This is my first time dealing with admin), I replied again:

"Pinging again, since last message had no response at all. Point out one single vote or post I've made that violates any rule, at all. The only thread I've voted any significant amount at all in was an [REDACTED-SUB] thread, and that's a sub I've been a member of for something like four years, and even after I unsubbed yesterday, its stl the first sub I open when I go to reddit. There was no vote manipulation, this is nothing but one petty little dictator mod that's pissed off because his reprehensible behaviors have come to light, and calling in Admins to save him. Why are you letting yourselves be used like this?? The question on my mind is, what" (typo at the end, started to add something, decided not to, didn't finish deleting)

Finally, about 12 hours in I think, I got an admin response. Troves of detail here:

"Hi, Sorry, it appears you used an alt to vote on that post."

Which I absolutely did not. So in similar complete lack of information kind, I responded:

"No, I did not".

After which I realized, that's not going to help anything - so I responded again, with detail:

"To add to my prior comment: To clarify, I have two alts - one I use for posting things of a sensitive nature, that does not vote, and another that I just made up because of this bullshit ban. Neither of them were used to vote on that post. Incidentally will there be any sanction placed upon whoever falsely suspended my account when you finally get around to fixing this?"

Additional context on alts, it's pretty easy to track my real identity from my username if you want, so when I post anything I don't want associated with my real identity, I use an alt. Honestly I haven't even logged in with that alt for a loooong time, and don't even recall the password - but more importantly I most certainly didn't vote with it. The new alt I made absolutely never voted whatsoever, and posted only a tiny number of posts, all specifically related to this suspension (for example, in /r/help asking about admin response times). Again, irrelevant to this issue, but addressing it so nothing is hidden.

A few hours later, I found out my SO was also suspended, put 2+2 together, and realized we were both suspended because we're in the same household - which means, of course, same IP. And since we're both heavy users of that sub, and that thread was basically the primary topic of discussion that day, we'd both been involved in the thread. Now kinda understanding the root cause, I send two copies of a message again - one to the admin that had responded before, the other in response to the initial message (didn't realize they both go to the same place anyway. They're not identical since I actually retyped the second one off the top of my head, but very similar. Just quoting the first one, but they're both in the images if you want to confirm I'm not misrepresenting:

"OK, trying admin mail again. This suspension was very much in error. An admin responded a few hours ago and claimed I was voting with an alt, but provided no details, and then did not respond to further requests. I was absolutely, unequivocally NOT voting with an alt. If I had to guess I'd bet I was reported by [REDACTED-MOD], who mods [REDACTED-SUB], and guessing I was flagged because my account uses the same IP as [REDACTED-SO], my SO. Frankly if that's the case, I'm appalled that your policies and staff are so flawed as to make such an error.. I would have thought you might bother to actually investigate before taking punitive measures against your users, but even a cursory glance through our histories would have made it very apparent that we're separate individuals. Meanwhile you have a mod unapologetically leveraging his position for monetary gain, and refusing to act. Fine, I get that the admin doesn't want to be involved in disputes with mods. But if that's your position, you need to apply it both ways. Right now you refuse to help users, but are allowing yourselves to be used as a weapon in a petty wannabe dictator's war with his own subscriber base. If you wish to return to acting with fairness, equity, and competence, please restore my account, restore my SO's account, and take steps to ensure the admin team is no longer used as a weapon for some petty moderators' private disputes."

(yeah, admittedly I could've been all sugar and spice, but I think I was justified in being a bit pissed at the whole thing).

Final response from the admin:

"Hi, Thanks for reaching out about this issue. Your response boils down to an admission of vote manipulation. Unfortunately, we cannot allow coordinated voting on our site, and we see votes that come from the same source especially several minutes apart as just that. Hopefully that makes sense, I am closing this thread."

I know it's a recurring joke that redditors don't have healthy, stable relationships... I just didn't realize until now that it was so viciously enforced.

Seriously, though - Apparently I need to coordinate with my SO to ensure we never vote in the same thread or something? We frequent the same subs, so it's going to happen, and if having a SO that is also an active reddit user "boils down to an admission of vote manipulation" ... I can't even begin to address how absolutely absurd that statement is ... but it means at any point in the future, we could be targeted again, and I'm assuming "repeat offenders" will receive escalating measures... Meaning I'm likely to get full-on banned eventually if this isn't addressed.

Links to images of redacted messages for evidence: http://imgur.com/a/r1Nnj

TLDR: Got suspended for 2 days because my SO and I were both (independently) active in the same thread, admin says that's an "admission of vote manipulation".