Governor Tony Evers (center) joined by Senator Mary Felzkowski and Assemblyman Pat Snyder at a bill signing in Wausau. MWC photo by Mike Leischner
MADISON, WI (WSAU) – The Wisconsin State Supreme Court will soon be in national news again as Gov. Tony Evers has asked the court to overturn a previous ruling that banned ballot drop boxes in Wisconsin.
According to Wisconsin Right Now, a brief was submitted to the court requesting that the newly formed liberal majority reverse a 2022 decision that found ballot drop boxes to be illegal under state law, saying, “Only the legislature may permit absentee voting via ballot drop boxes.”
Gov. Evers spoke about the brief in a statement, saying, “At the very heart of our democracy is the fundamental freedom to vote. In Wisconsin, we must work to protect that freedom and to empower our clerks and election administrators to work hard at the local level to make decisions that are right for their communities. Dropbox voting is safe and secure, and there is nothing in Wisconsin’s election laws that prohibits our local clerks from using this secure option, absent an incorrect ruling by our courts.”
In recent years, the Wisconsin Elections Commission released data that showed around 40% of Wisconsinites who voted in the 2020 election used a ballot drop box to vote in a presidential race that was won by Joe Biden by just 21,000 votes. According to the AP, there were over a dozen unattended drop boxes in Milwaukee alone, where Biden defeated Trump by a margin of over 100,000 votes.
Republicans have argued, unsuccessfully in court, that many of those votes may have been compromised due to the boxes not being secure enough to reliably provide information on when votes were being dropped off and how to ensure every vote was being legally submitted with the full knowledge of the voter who filled out the ballot through ballot harvesting initiatives that were operating in Wisconsin.
Evers’s brief will also come less than a year after a Democratic-aligned law firm known as the Elias Law Group made a similar argument to that of Republicans in a lawsuit on behalf of the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans and Priorities USA, which has pledged $75 million to support the reelection of President Joe Biden. The lawsuit is aimed at overturning the ballot box ban, which called U.S. Postal Service mailboxes “unsecure” and less safe than the drop box option, saying, “Without the opportunity to drop off their absentee ballots at drop boxes, voters must instead rely on the U.S. Postal Service and its unsecured mailboxes to deliver their absentee ballot and simply hope that the ballot arrives by election day.”
The lawsuit did not provide evidence or examples to support the claim that U.S. Postal Service boxes are less secure than the ballot box option, and the high court will begin hearing oral arguments on May 13.
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