On July 5, 2024, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a ruling that brought back the use of unstaffed drop boxes as the 2024 presidential election quickly approaches.
In a 4-3 decision, the state Supreme Court overturned a 2022 ban on unmanned dropboxes, the justices agreed with Democrats who contended that the Wisconsin Supreme Court had misinterpreted the law in its previous ruling in 2022, and wrongly reached the conclusion that absentee ballots can only be sent back to a clerk in their office, and not to a dropbox that is located in another spot.
“What if we just got it wrong?” stated Justice Jill Karofsky during arguments made in May. “What if we made a mistake? Are we now supposed to just perpetuate that mistake into the future?”
Attorneys who represented Republican supporters of the 2022 ruling contended that there have been no changes in the facts or the law to merit overturning the ruling.
According to an Epoch Times report, Misha Tseytlin, attorney for the State legislature — under Republican control —, contended that if the court overturned the ruling, it would have to take up the issue again on the next occasion that the court’s makeup changes.
There will be a court vacancy in 2025 due to how Justice Ann Walsh Bradley won’t be up for re-election.
But Justice Karofsky questioned what the court was to do if it believed the previous decision was “egregiously wrong from the start, that its reasoning was exceptionally weak and that the decision has had damaging consequences.”
“I see this as check, check, check here, so what are we to do?” she questioned Tseytlin.
David Fox, the legal counsel for the organizations that brought forward the challenge, said the current law does not work owing to how it’s not explicitly clear where ballots can be sent back.
Several justices questioned the idea of talking about the previous ruling yet again.
“You are asking this court to be a super Legislature” and give “free rein to municipal clerks to conduct elections however they see fit,” Justice Rebecca Bradley stated.
The case was put forward by Priorities USA, a voter mobilization organization, and the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Voters. Governor Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which presides over elections, backs allowing drop boxes.
Election officials from four counties, which includes the state’s two largest counties, filed a brief in favor of overturning the ruling. They contended that absentee ballot drop boxes have been allegedly used for decades without any problems as a secure manner for voters to return their ballots.
Wisconsin is a key battleground state that the Trump campaign has to win in the 2024 presidential election cycle. Joe Biden barely won it by 20,000 votes (49.5% to 48.8%). So the state is very much in play. Hopefully, the Trump campaign sticks to its America First guns of immigration restriction, economic nationalism, and a restrained foreign policy.
Those are the key planks for the GOP’s success in the Rust Belt.