Zapata's motive stemmed from her frustration with Republicans whom she felt constantly griped about the ease of committing voter fraud. In an act of defiance, she illegally mailed three ballots to a GOP state representative, effectively proving their point and landing herself in legal trouble.
She really showed them, eh?
From Western Journal:
Zapata, who worked for the commission for seven years, was fired just days before the 2022 midterms after it emerged that she had sent the military ballots to the home of GOP state Rep. Janel Brantdjen.
Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson said at the time she had admitted to the scheme.
“This has every appearance of being an egregious and blatant violation of trust,” Johnson said, according to WITI-TV. “I was stunned, absolutely stunned, to hear the very serious allegations against her.”
When the case went to trial, Zapata’s defense was that she sent the ballots to Brandjen “because she knew she would not cast the ballots and because of her history with election fraud claims,” the Journal Sentinel reported.
“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 in a police interview played for the court.
“I did not think it through,” she added . “I didn’t have some manipulative plan.”
Her defense? Breaking the law in this way was part of acting in her official capacity as an election official.
