Kimberly Zapata, a former Wisconsin election official, was found guilty of election fraud for illegally sending three absentee ballots to a Republican legislator to prove a point about vulnerabilities in the system.
Zapata claimed she did this because the legislator had raised concerns about voter fraud, but wanted to show her a real vulnerability.
However, prosecutors argued Zapata broke the law instead of raising issues through proper channels.
“This has every appearance of being an egregious and blatant violation of trust,” Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said. “I was stunned, absolutely stunned, to hear the very serious allegations against her.”
While no illegal votes were cast, the incident demonstrated how easy it could be to commit fraud given Zapata’s access and knowledge as an election official.
It also undermined Democratic claims that the system is secure, as even an insider was able to exploit loopholes through criminal acts.
“She is the most vocal election fraud politician that I know of, and I thought that maybe this would make her stop and think and redirect her focus away from these outrageous conspiracy theories to something that’s actually real,” Zapata said.
“I did not think it through,” she added . “I didn’t have some manipulative plan.”
Zapata’s actions backfired and proved the opposite of what she intended to show through an ill-advised scheme.
“The appropriate way to raise a concern is to bring forth information, it’s not to commit a crime,” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Westphal said.
“If Ms. Zapata felt this information needed to be brought to light, there was multiple, legitimate avenues she could have taken. She chose instead to take the avenue of breaking the law.”
“This was not acting as a guardian of our elections, a guardian of our democracy,” Westphal added. “This was her deserting her duty to protect and secure our elections.”
