The Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a ruling on Friday that officials will be allowed to place ballot drop boxes all around their communities in the upcoming fall elections, which is an overturning of its previous decision just two years ago, which placed strict limits on their use. Well, I guess we’re going to be seeing some shenanigans this time around after all, aren’t we? What is so dang hard about having free and fair elections? Good grief.
Here are more details on the matter from Breitbart:
The court limited the use of drop boxes in July 2022, ruling then that they could be placed only in local election clerks’ offices and no one other than the voter could return a ballot in person.
Conservatives controlled the court at that time, but Janet Protasiewicz’s election victory in April 2023 flipped the court to liberal control. Seeing an opening, Priorities USA, a progressive voter mobilization group, asked the court in February to revisit the decision.
At least 29 other states allow for absentee ballot drop boxes, according to the U.S. Vote Foundation, and expanded use in Wisconsin could have major implications in the presidential race. Wisconsin again figures to be a crucial swing state after President Joe Biden barely won it in 2020 and Donald Trump narrowly took it in 2016. Democrats believe that making it easier to vote absentee will boost turnout for their side.
The justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court bench made an announcement back in March that they would be going back over the ban on drop boxes, though they wouldn’t be considering any other parts of the case. This, of course, went over like a lead balloon with conservatives, who immediately accused the left of attempting to tip the scales in favor of their own political party in the 2024 elections. Unsurprisingly, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers asked the court in April to allow the use of drop boxes.
On Friday, the court decided by a vote of 4-3 to allow drop boxes to be used in any location.
Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, one of the court’s four liberal justices, wrote for the majority that placing a ballot in a drop box set up and maintained by a local election clerk is no different than giving the ballot to the clerk, regardless of the box’s location. Local clerks have great discretion in how they administer elections and that extends to using and locating drop boxes, she added.
“Our decision today does not force or require that any municipal clerks use drop boxes,” Bradley said in the ruling. “It merely acknowledges what (state law) has always meant: that clerks may lawfully utilize secure drop boxes in an exercise of their statutorily-conferred discretion.”
The three votes against the measure were, of course, from the more conservative justices on the bench. Justice Rebecca Bradley stated that liberals are only trying to advance their own political agenda, going on to slam them for not paying any mind to the precedent that was set in the first ruling from 2022.
“The majority in this case overrules (the 2022 decision) not because it is legally erroneous, but because the majority finds it politically inconvenient,” Bradley added. “The majority’s activism marks another triumph of political power over legal principle in this court.”
The popularity of absentee voting exploded during the pandemic in 2020, with more than 40% of all voters casting mail ballots, a record high. At least 500 drop boxes were set up in more than 430 communities for the election that year, including more than a dozen each in Madison and Milwaukee — the state’s two most heavily Democratic cities.
Former President Donald Trump, along with a majority of other Republicans, have stated their belief that the use of drop boxes has allowed cheating to take place, and thus, they should not be allowed.
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