In 2022, Wisconsin Republicans banned the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in response to all of the election mischief observed in the previous two election cycles. This was particularly problematic during the pandemic when many primarily blue states used the lockdowns as an excuse to promote massive mail-in voting, a position most have refused to relinquish since then. The Democrats challenged the change immediately, but the state Supreme Court ruled that state law does not allow for the placement of drop boxes anywhere except in election clerk offices. But the court has flipped to a narrow liberal majority since then and now the leftist judges appear to be considering bringing up the case again and overturning the previous ruling. And they hope to do it in time for this year’s elections, of course. (CBS News)
Liberal justices who control the Wisconsin Supreme Court showed signs Monday of being willing to overturn a ruling that all but eliminated the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in the swing state.
At issue is whether the court should overturn its July 2022 ruling that said nothing in state law allowed for absentee drop boxes to be placed anywhere other than in election clerk offices. Conservative justices controlled the court then, but the court flipped to 4-3 liberal control last year, setting the stage to possibly overturn the ruling.
“What if we just got it wrong?” liberal Justice Jill Karofsky said of the earlier absentee ballot ruling during arguments. “What if we made a mistake? Are we now supposed to just perpetuate that mistake into the future?”
The liberal justices are asking, “What if we made a mistake?” But it’s hard to see how that could be the case. The court previously ruled that in order for a voter to legally submit a ballot under current election laws, they need to “personally deliver their ballot to the clerk or the clerk’s authorized representative.” That seems rather unambiguous, though exceptions are made for those who are physically unable to show up to submit their ballot. The court said that in order to make the boxes legal in all cases, legislators would need to first change the existing laws, something they have been unable to do thus far.
In 2020, as was seen in most states, Wisconsin set up ballot drop boxes all over the place to avoid having voters personally interacting during the pandemic. That was technically illegal even then, but nobody challenged it because everyone still believed all of Fauci’s nonsense about social distancing and masks. Now the pandemic is over but the Democrats don’t want to return to following the established rules. They know a good thing when they see it and mail-in voting has worked out very well for them. We shall leave it to you to decide how much of that good fortune was come upon legally.
We could have a lot more confidence in the integrity of our elections if the entire country followed Wisconsin’s voting laws. That level of confidence has been badly shaken in recent years for obvious reasons. Election fraud surrounding massive mail-in ballot systems and drop boxes has been found almost everywhere that anyone has seriously looked into the issue. Republicans remain largely averse to early voting, mail-in ballots, and ballot harvesting. The Democrats have no such qualms. Why would they when they keep mysteriously winning close races in places where they had previously lost before the advent of mass mail-in ballots?
This remains a problem for the GOP because we are forced to use the system as it currently exists, not as we might wish it to exist. Unfortunately, Republicans would need to win sweeping electoral victories at every level before we could go back to primarily in-person voting on election day. And the chance always exists that some people might unexpectedly need to travel on election day, or fall ill, or simply forget. (Those in my age bracket and above can probably relate to that.) In a very close race, it doesn’t take too many of those people to tip the balance in the other direction.