How Wisconsin turned ballot boxes into a bar fight
Now 1800 unelected officials get to make up the rules.
Ballot drop boxes seem like a straightforward election reform.
The idea is pretty simple. Make it easy to vote. You don’t have to schlep into a county office to return an absentee ballot, just deposit it in a box outside your local city hall or a nearby fire station or school.
Yet we’ve managed to turn this idea into one more mud wrestling match
.The issue is framed by two contradictory state supreme court rulings. First, in 2022 the Conservative Supreme Court ruled that dropped boxes were illegal. Then two years later in the summer of 2024 a new Supreme Court ruled they were legal. The only thing that changed was the composition of the Court which now bends left.
Along the way, however, the state never passed any guidelines. So in the November election 1800 local unelected officials adlibbed the rules based on which Supreme Court ruling they liked. In Wauwatosa you might never find a box. In Waunakee you might find them scattered judiciously. And in Weyauwega, you might trip over them on every random street corner.
Now all this confusion reigns, ironically, when a red-hot Supreme Court election is just weeks away. If the court changes stripes, will there be another 180-degree pivot?
We need to settle this. I am looking at you in Madison. The Wisconsin legislature must issue uniform standards and tell the local election officials their job is to administer elections, not make up the rules on the fly.
Kathy Bernier, a former county clerk and former state senator, has a commonsense approach. She thinks establishing a chain of custody for ballot retrieval should be standard, “They need to document who retrieved the ballots from the drop boxes How many they retrieved and at what time.”
If the Republicans balk, they should talk to their counterparts in solidly GOP states like Georgia, Utah and Florida which have managed to blend access and security.
The Bi partisan Defend Democracy project urges expedited action. Our leadership includes me, former GOP AG J.B. Van Hollen, and Democrats Mike Tate and Mandela Barnes.
Since the days of fighting Bob LaFollette, Wisconsin has been a national leader in election reform. Today we are a laggard. Time for us to reclaim our heritage.
I don't understand why Wisconsin would restrict ballot boxes. Several deep red states rely on ballot boxes and mail-in voting, which has procedures to make it safe and secure. (Most important word: Procedures!) As was noted in a previous post, counting ballots before election day (which many other states allow) would also lead to a feeling of security because there wouldn't be late-night changes to the leads - which is normal when absentee votes are counted throughout the day and into the night. Final suggestion: make every politician not on the ballot help in working the election, to make it both quicker and to give politicians a sense of the work done in elections.