Wisconsin Supreme Court agrees to take case that could again allow use of absentee drop boxes

by Henry Redman, Wisconsin Examiner
March 12, 2024

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday voted to accept a case from a liberal voting rights group that would overturn a 2022 decision by the Court to ban the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in the state. 

The Court had banned the use of drop boxes in Teigen v. Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) after Republicans across the state became hostile to their use for returning absentee ballots during the 2020 presidential election. Drop boxes had been in use for years prior in a number of municipalities, urban and rural, yet the Court had agreed with a Waukesha County judge that the WEC had allowed them to be used unlawfully without creating a proper rule guiding their use. 

The Teigen case was brought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), a conservative legal group that stated it wanted to end “ballot harvesting” in Wisconsin. After 2020, conservatives repeatedly said drop boxes left the state vulnerable to ballot harvesting, or the process of one person picking up and dropping off dozens or even hundreds of ballots at once. Claims of ballot harvesting have been at the center of many conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. 

In a dissent, conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley — whose ascension to the Court was aided by WILL president Rick Esenberg — wrote that the decision to accept the case was evidence of the Court’s liberal majority seeking to change election rules to favor Democrats. 

“By granting this petition to bypass, the majority again aims to increase the electoral prospects of its preferred political party,” Bradley wrote in an opinion joined by conservative Chief Justice Annette Ziegler. “Less than two years ago, in Teigen v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, this court determined that ‘ballot drop boxes are illegal under Wisconsin statutes, [and] [a]n absentee ballot must be returned by mail or the voter must personally deliver it to the municipal clerk at the clerk’s office or a designated alternate site.’ Finding the decision politically inconvenient, and emboldened by a new makeup of the court, this new majority embraces the opportunity to overturn Teigen. The majority’s decision to do so will upset the status quo of election administration mere months before a presidential election and lead to chaos and confusion for Wisconsin voters and election officials.”

The Court set arguments for May 13. If the case does lead to a change in state election law relating to the use of drop boxes, that will not happen before the April election.

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