Chipping away at voting rights.

Wisconsin Supreme Court outlaws ballot drop boxes for elections

A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the use of ballot drop boxes, which increased substantially across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, is illegal under state law.

In a 4-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority also said voters cannot have other people return their completed ballots in person to a clerk’s office, though it declined to rule on whether anyone other than a voter can send in ballots by mail.

In other words the court made voting more difficult for people in Wisconsin. What does making voting more difficult accomplish? It reduces voting by poor people, non-white people, disabled people…aka people likely to vote for the not-Republicans.

Wisconsin is likely a key battleground in the 2024 presidential election. In 2016, Trump won the state by fewer than 25,000 votes out of 2.8 million cast, and in 2020, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, carried Wisconsin by fewer than 21,000 votes out of 3.2 million cast.

They need that thumb on the scale.

In dissent, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley – joined by the court’s two other liberals – said the decision erected a new barrier to voting with little justification.

“Although it pays lip service to the import of the right to vote, the majority/lead opinion has the practical effect of making it more difficult to exercise it,” she wrote.

Naturally enough, since the whole point of drop boxes is to make voting easier.

The dissent also argued that the decision to bar other people from returning ballots to clerks’ offices would primarily hurt homebound residents, including disabled and sick people.

And people with small children at home and no one else to take over the child duty. That’s a lot of people – mostly women, of course.