At the end of last week, the news broke that a City of Milwaukee Deputy Election Clerk Kimberly Zapata had committed election fraud by applying for three military absentee ballots using three different fictitious names. To make matters worse, she sent these ballots to State Representative Janel Brandtjen, a known MAGAt and election denier, who is the Republican chair of the elections committee. Yeah.
Zapata was fired by Mayor Cavalier Johnson and then charged on Friday::
The criminal complaint filed Friday states that Zapata told investigators she sent the ballots in the names of three fictitious military voters to make a point about the existence of fraud in the voting system — though she said this was not the same situation as people who are involved in conspiracy theories.
The complaint states that she wanted to redirect Brandtjen's focus "away from outrageous conspiracy theories and to something that is actually real."
It also states that "Zapata stated that she felt overwhelmed due to the threats of violence the Election Commission was receiving, in addition to the constant daily harassment and accusations of lying and hiding things. She stated she wanted the truth to come out so that they could focus on the actual problems."
Contrary to her stated intent, the predictable is happening. MAGAts are screaming about voter fraud and screaming about Milwaukee, which is a large stronghold of Democratic voters and has the largest Black population in the state.
It needs to be noted that this is the second incident of election fraud involving absentee ballots in recent months. The first incident involved a man named Harry Wait who had also fraudulently requested for absentee ballots in other people's names.
The truly disturbing aspect of that story is that the Wisconsin Department of Justice had to handle the entire case because the Republican Racine County Sheriff, Christopher Schmaling, not only refused to arrest Wait but also commended him for committing fraud in the first place.
We should have realized now that the Republicans screaming about stolen elections was pure projection.
