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The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled absentee ballot boxes can be reintroduced in the swing state – overturning a 2022 ruling that had largely prohibited them.
In the Friday 4-3 ruling, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley wrote for the majority: “Our decision today does not force or require that any municipal clerks use drop boxes. It merely acknowledges what (state law) has always meant: that clerks may lawfully utilize secure drop boxes in an exercise of their statutorily-conferred discretion.”
The 2022 conservative court had ruled that drop boxes were illegal in the battleground state, making the voting process more complicated for some Wisconsin voters.
Liberal justices won back the majority in the Wisconsin court in 2023.
Although drop boxes had been used in the state for decades, they came under fire during the 2020 presidential election and the Covid-19 pandemic, when limiting in-person interactions was paramount.
Republican claims of voter fraud in absentee ballots led to questioning the legitimacy of drop boxes — especially in Wisconsin, where President Joe Biden narrowly defeated Donald Trump in 2020.
There has been no proof of widespread voting fraud through absentee ballots.
Priorities USA, who sued the Wisconsin Election Commission over the drop boxes, had argued the lack of drop boxes places a “burden” on both the voter and the municipal clerks.
In her dissent, Judge Rebecca Bradley claimed the liberal majority “again forsakes the rule of law in an attempt to advance its political agenda.”
She then accused the majority of “loosening the legislature’s regulations governing the privilege of absentee voting in the hopes of tipping the scales in future elections.”
The ruling arrives more than four months ahead of the contested 2024 presidential election, which will see another Trump-Biden matchup. Trump has already raised concerns about the election’s integrity, though he has offered little proof.
