Voters will use ballot drop boxes again this fall in Wisconsin, among a few battleground states that could decide the Nov. 5 presidential election, prompting concern among election integrity advocates.
The dissenting opinion in the state Supreme Court ruling reinstating the drop boxes argued that insufficient standards could allow “unattended cardboard box” or an “unsecured sack” to be used as a ballot box.
However, others are hopeful that concerned citizens will prevent that.
“Knowing that they are being watched by concerned citizens helps prevent cardboard boxes from being used,” Annette Olson, CEO of the John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy, a conservative think tank, told The Daily Signal.
Olson is also coordinator of the Wisconsin Election Integrity Coalition, which has tried to work with local election officials.
In July, the 4-3 liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned a 2022 ruling by a previous conservative majority determining that no state law authorized the use of drop boxes. Wisconsin statute says that absentee ballots either may be mailed or otherwise returned to a municipal clerk’s office.
Last month, the new majority held that a clerk may name an “alternate absentee ballot site” as a “location designated by the municipal clerk outside of the municipal clerk’s office where voters may request, vote, and return absentee ballots.”
Justice Ann Walsh Bradley wrote the majority opinion.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote that the court’s majority “dismantles the carefully regulated privilege of absentee voting.”
“An unattended cardboard box on the clerk’s driveway? An unsecured sack sitting outside the local library or on a college campus? Door-to-door retrieval from voters’ homes or dorm rooms?” Bradley’s dissent argues. “Under the majority’s logic, because the statute doesn’t expressly forbid such methods of ballot delivery, they are perfectly lawful.”
A ballot drop box near a clerk’s office would be consistent with existing law, MacIver’s Olson said.
“To have a box to drop off a ballot near the city clerk’s office if the clerk is not there makes sense,” she said. “If it’s ballot boxes outside every fire station, that’s a stretch.”
To maintain confidence in elections, Olson argued, votes should be as verifiable as an ATM financial transaction.
Celestine Jeffreys, city clerk of Green Bay, Wisconsin, said all ballot drop boxes will be monitored by camera and that tracking by the city will ensure the number of ballots collected from the boxes matches the number of envelopes dropped off.
“Many other states use ballot drop boxes. The city of Green Bay follows best practices,” Jeffreys told The Daily Signal, then referred to the Americans With Disabilities Act. “The drop boxes need to be ADA-accessible. Best practices in other states also have drop boxes that you can walk to or drive to.”
Jeffreys said she isn’t aware of any mass ballot dumps at drop boxes in Green Bay. Only people authorized to do so can drop off multiple ballots, such as someone authorized to care for the disabled, she said.
“Ballot drop boxes are secure. It’s not like a mail slot. It’s skinny, and you can only fit in one envelope at a time, maybe two envelopes in,” Jeffreys said. “If someone wanted to put in 30 ballots, it would take a long time.”
She said she wants to improve the drop boxes from 2020, not only for security, but also to be more accessible under the Americans With Disabilities Act and to be convenient for either walk- or drive-throughs.
City clerk’s offices in Madison, Milwaukee, and Kenosha did not respond to inquiries for this article.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court embarrassed itself with the ruling, said Ken Cuccinelli, chair of the Election Transparency Initiative and a former Virginia attorney general.
“In Wisconsin, four out of seven judges just rewrote their own law,” Cuccinelli told The Daily Signal.
“The Wisconsin Election Commission allowed drop boxes because of COVID,” Cuccinelli said. “But it’s nowhere in the law. It was a ludicrous legal case. It should be an embarrassment to those judges.”
A spokesperson for the Wisconsin Elections Commission referred questions to its website and information posted there.
The agency says it will provide local officials with training. It also says that residents are allowed to monitor drop boxes as long as that doesn’t interfere with voting.
“The decision held that state law permits clerks to lawfully utilize secure drop boxes in an exercise of their statutorily conferred discretion,” the Wisconsin Elections Commission says of the state high court’s ruling. “The decision did not provide guidance on what it means for a drop box to be ‘secure.’”
The commission suggests that “clerks thoroughly complete a security assessment for each intended drop box location prior to deployment.”
The Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau, a state agency, issued a report in October 2021 that found drop boxes were a focal point in questions about the 2020 presidential election.
“A total of 26 of the 47 municipal clerks we contacted indicated that they used drop boxes, municipal return slots, or similar receptacles for the November 2020 general election,” the report said. “We found that: 25 clerks indicated that their drop boxes were locked or had tamper-evident seals; … and 14 clerks indicated that they used cameras or local law enforcement surveillance to monitor their drop boxes.”
The agency’s report recommended that if drop boxes continue to be used in elections, the Wisconsin Elections Commission should “establish minimum requirements for securing the drop boxes, as well as prescribe where clerks could locate drop boxes and how frequently clerks would be required to collect absentee ballots from drop boxes.”
The report also said the state’s Legislature could consider modifying statutes to clarify whether “individuals are allowed to return absentee ballots to drop boxes.”
