Prosecutor tells jury former Milwaukee official who requested fake ballots was no whistleblower

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A prosecutor urged jurors Wednesday to find a former Milwaukee elections official who requested fake absentee ballots guilty of misconduct and fraud, rejecting her argument that she was only trying to expose flaws in Wisconsin’s election system.

Assistant District Attorney Matthew Westphal said during his closing arguments in Kimberley Zapata’s trial in Milwaukee that if Zapata felt the system was vulnerable she could have told state elections officials, reporters or legislators but instead chose to go rogue and break the law.

“She is not a whistleblower. She’s not exposing information. She’s committing election fraud,” Westphal said. “As a society we cannot tolerate people who break the law when there are multiple legitimate means to raise those same concerns.”

Zapata’s attorney, Daniel Adams, said in his closing arguments that Zapata was stressed over death threats and wanted to divert election conspiracy theorists’ attention to real loopholes in hopes the harassment would stop. Her actions were “not perfect in any way,” Adams told the jury, “but the truth of what she was pointing out is there. And it remains.”

Zapata was serving as deputy director of the Milwaukee Election Commission in October 2022 when she accessed the state’s voter database from her work laptop and fabricated three names with fake Social Security numbers and requested military absentee ballots in those names, according to a criminal complaint.

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