Dem
50
Ties
2
GOP
48
That means "Boo, Zapata!", and is as close as we can come to the opposite of "¡Viva, Zapata!" (Hurrah, Zapata!).
The Zapata in question today is not the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano, but instead the (now-former) Milwaukee Election Commission Deputy Director Kimberly. Ms. Zapata was one of the folks responsible for maintaining the integrity of elections in Wisconsin's largest county. And she apparently had a funny understanding of what that means, because she requested a bunch of military absentee ballots and had them all sent to the house of State Assemblywoman Janel Brandtjen (R), who is a Trumpy election denier and conspiracy theorist.
As you can infer from our description of her as "now-former," Zapata has been fired from her post. Not only that, but she's likely going to be charged with one or more crimes, possibly malfeasance in office (a felony) and/or illegally requesting a ballot (a misdemeanor). Zapata will defend herself by claiming she was just trying to show how easy it is to commit fraud, but that's not going to be easy to prove, and it may not be a valid defense, anyhow.
In our view, the court should throw the book at Zapata. One of the purposes of criminal prosecution is to make an example of a perpetrator, and Zapata needs to be made an example of. We also hope that there are very few other stories like this. And we have that hope because we hope there are few shenanigans in the next week. At the same time, we also hope that 100% of the people who do commit shenanigans get caught and prosecuted. That is occasion for some of the most justifiable schadenfreude we can think of. (Z)