The Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned a previous ruling, allowing ballot drop boxes ahead of November. How will this affect the election?
From The Wall Street Journal. Wisconsin voters can once again use absentee-ballot drop boxes to deliver their votes after the state supreme court on Friday reinstated their use, overturning its own 2022 ban.
In a 4-3 ruling issued July 5, the court’s majority said state law allows the use of secure drop boxes as an alternative to returning absentee ballots to a clerk’s office or by mail.
“Our decision today does not force or require that any municipal clerks use drop boxes,” the majority wrote.
“The statute does not specify a location to which a ballot must be returned and requires only that the ballot be delivered to a location the municipal clerk, within his or her discretion, designates,” it wrote. …
Absentee and by-mail ballots have become a political dividing line in recent years. Wisconsin is expected to be a battleground state in the November presidential contest. The court’s ruling resetting requirements for absentee voting comes just over a month before Wisconsin’s coming Aug. 13 partisan primary.
Many states expanded the use of ballot drop boxes during the 2020 elections amid the Covid pandemic, prompting a backlash from then-President Donald Trump and other Republicans who questioned the security of drop boxes. …
A lengthy dissent penned by Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley, supported by two other justices, argued Friday’s ruling was made for political reasons, not analysis of the law.
“The majority ends the term by loosening the legislature’s regulations governing the privilege of absentee voting in the hopes of tipping the scales in future elections,” Bradley wrote. …
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(Excerpt from The Wall Street Journal. Photo Credit: Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=126842206)