No, Wisconsin law does not allow ballot drop boxes, contrary to the partisan opinion of the state Supreme Court. (Opinion)
by Dan O’Donnell
The Wisconsin Supreme Court really doesn’t want the people of this state to know what it’s up to. First, the four liberal justices who now control the Court overturned Wisconsin’s legislative maps late on the Friday afternoon before Christmas. Now, it reversed its own ruling banning ballot drop boxes late on the Friday afternoon following the Fourth of July.
Less than two years after the Court’s then-conservative majority held that state law allows for the return of absentee ballots only through the mail or in person to the municipal clerk or local election commission, the liberals demanded a do-over.
Despite screeching for months about the destruction of stare decisis when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Wisconsin Justice Janet Protasiewicz joined with her fellow three liberals in rejecting what in any other circumstance they all might have termed “settled law.”
In so doing, they once again ignored the clear letter of Wisconsin election law to implement a poorly reasoned, politically motivated fiat. Writing for the majority, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley came to the laughable conclusion that placing a ballot in a drop box is identical to returning it to a municipal clerk in person.
“A drop box is set up, maintained, secured, and emptied by the municipal clerk,” she wrote. “This is the case even if the drop box is in a location other than the municipal clerk’s office. As analyzed, the statute does not specify a location to which a ballot must be returned and requires only that the ballot be delivered to a location the municipal clerk, within his or her discretion, designates.”
Only the statute does in fact specify a location to which a ballot must be returned. Wisconsin Statute § 6.87(4), the very statute Bradley claims is ambiguous, states unequivocally that absentee ballots must be “delivered in person, to the municipal clerk issuing the ballot or ballots.” The plain meaning of “in person to the municipal clerk” is “handing the ballot to the municipal clerk,” not “leaving it in a box on a random street corner for someone to pick up later.”
Merriam-Webster defines the phrase “in person” as “in one’s bodily presence,” which “describes something done by (or with) a person who is physically present as in ‘She conducted several in-person interviews for the job.’” Under this definition, would she be able to conduct an in-person interview by dropping her answers in a box for her prospective boss to pick up later?
For Bradley and the other liberals to believe that “in person” does not actually mean “in person,” they would have to be too stupid to read a dictionary. This is admittedly a distinct possibility, but a much likelier scenario is that the justices wanted ballot drop boxes back and had to pretend that they didn’t understand plain English.
Here’s an easy way to test this: Have Bradley, Protasiewicz, Rebecca Dallet, or Jill Karofsky ever allowed an attorney to argue “in person” before them by writing their arguments down and then leaving them in a box a few dozen blocks away from their chambers in the Wisconsin Capitol for a clerk to pick up later?
If they have, then their ballot drop box ruling makes sense, but if they haven’t (and they most definitely haven’t), then they obviously understand the plain meaning of the statute and their ruling is yet another ham-handed political farce.
No wonder they released over a holiday weekend.
Originally published by the McIver Institute. Republished with permission.
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