With the 2024 presidential election drawing near, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled on July 5, 2024, reintroducing the use of unmanned drop boxes.
The state Supreme Court overturned a ban on unmanned dropboxes in a 4-3 ruling. The justices agreed with Dems, who argued that the Wisconsin Supreme Court had incorrectly interpreted the law in its previous ruling and came to the incorrect conclusion that absentee ballots could only be returned to an office clerk rather than a dropbox located elsewhere.
During the May arguments, Justice Jill Karofsky asked, “What if we just got it wrong?” “What if we went wrong? Should we continue to make the same mistake in the future?
The 2022 decision’s Republican defenders argued that neither the law nor the circumstances had changed sufficiently to warrant reconsideration.
The Republican-controlled state legislature’s counsel, Misha Tseytlin, reportedly said in an Epoch Times article that if the court reversed the decision, it would have to reconsider the matter when the court’s composition changed.
A court vacancy will arise in 2025 as a result of Justice Ann Walsh Bradley’s decision not to seek reelection.
But if the court found the earlier ruling to be “egregiously erroneous from the outset, that its reasoning was exceedingly poor, and that the decision has had negative ramifications,” Justice Karofsky questioned what the court should do.
“This seems like a check, check, check situation, so what should we do now?” Asking Tseytlin a question.
David Fox, the group’s legal counsel who filed the challenge, claimed that the lack of clarity in the current statute about the location of ballot return boxes makes it unworkable.
A few judges expressed doubts about revisiting the earlier decision.
Justice Rebecca Bradley declared, “You are asking this court to be a super-legislature,” and that municipal clerks should have “full liberty to administer elections however they deem fit.”
The Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Voters and Priorities USA, a voter mobilization organization, brought forth the case. Both the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which oversees elections, and Governor Tony Evers support permitting drop boxes.
Two of the state’s major counties, together with four other counties’ election officials, submitted a brief supporting the reversal of the decision. They said that drop boxes for absentee voting have supposedly been in use for decades as a safe way for voters to return their votes.
In the 2024 presidential election cycle, Wisconsin is a crucial battleground state that the Trump campaign needs to prevail in. By a mere 20,000 votes (49.5% to 48.8%), Joe Biden prevailed. Thus, the state is a major factor. Hopefully, the Trump campaign stays true to its America First platforms of economic nationalism, immigration limitation, and circumspect foreign policy.
These will give the Rust Belt GOP its foundation.
Author: Scott Dowdy
