A Waukesha County judge ruled that absentee ballot drop boxes can no longer be used in Wisconsin ahead of the state’s crucial midterm elections.
According to USA Today, Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Michael Bohren determined state law allows absentee ballots to be returned in person or by mail — but not in a ballot drop box.
“It’s all good and nice, but there’s no authority to do it,” Bohren said.
Bohren’s ruling banning the use of drop boxes was in response to a lawsuit filed in June by two Milwaukee voters with the help of the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL).
WILL cites a statute in Wisconsin law, which states “the envelope shall be mailed by the elector, or delivered in person, to the municipal clerk issuing the ballot or ballots” in regard to absentee ballots.
“A drop box is not the ‘municipal clerk.’ It is an unsupervised, inanimate object. Allowing ballots to be cast by placing them into an unsupervised, inanimate object invites the fraud and abuse that the Legislature was attempting to prevent” the lawsuit says.
Many of the ballot drop boxes in Wisconsin are tamper proof, under 24-hour camera surveillance and in fire stations, libraries or other government offices, USA Today reports.
“In none of the arguments this court heard, no one has been able to explain how putting a ballot into a drop box counts as in-person delivery,” WILL deputy counsel Luke Berg said. “There is no person present when a drop box is alone in a park with no one else around.”
Wisconsin had more than 500 absentee ballot drop boxes in the 2020 elections amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ruling, which will almost certainly be appealed, hurts Democrats who had pushed for expanded absentee ballot use during the pandemic.
If it is allowed to stand, no ballot drop boxes can be used in the state’s Feb. 15 judicial primary elections and the judicial general election on April 5, the Associated Press noted. Both are usually low-turnout elections.
However, the ruling will be far more consequential in November when more people cast their votes in the state’s gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races.
