The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday banned the use of most ballot boxes for voters to return mail-in ballots, giving Republicans in the state a major victory in their effort to limit voting access in urban areas.
The 4-3 ruling by the court’s conservative majority will go into effect for Wisconsin’s primary election next month, though its true impact is unlikely to be felt until the general election in November. Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican, are both facing what are expected to be very tight re-election bids.
The court took a literal interpretation of state law, finding that returning a mail-in ballot to a city clerk, as Justice Rebecca G. Bradley wrote for the majority, “does not mean not and has not historically been understood to mean delivery to an unattended ballot. box.”
While state law permits the return of mail-in ballots, Judge Bradley wrote, “Ballot boxes, however, are not mailboxes.”
City clerks who oversee Wisconsin elections used drop boxes for years without controversy before the 2020 election, when about 500 were in place statewide, usually outside public libraries and municipal buildings.
After the election, which President Donald J. Trump lost in Wisconsin to Joseph R. Biden Jr. by approximately 20,000 votes, Mr. Trump’s campaign and his supporters filed a series of lawsuits seeking to invalidate the votes cast in drop boxes because the method of returning the ballots was not explicitly allowed by state law.
In the opinion, Judge Bradley compared the Wisconsin election to contests rigged by dictators in Syria and North Korea and questioned whether past elections in the state had been legitimate.
“Thousands of votes were cast via this illegal method, thereby directly harming Wisconsin voters,” she wrote. “The illegality of these drop boxes weakens people’s belief that the election produced an outcome that reflects their will. Wisconsin voters, and all legal voters, are harmed when the institution charged with administering Wisconsin elections fails to follow the law, leaving the results in question.
The Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature are highly unlikely to pass legislation allowing drop boxes. Robin Vos, the powerful Wisconsin Assembly Speaker, said in September that drop boxes should only be allowed inside a city clerk’s office during regular working hours.
“Should we have drop boxes everywhere someone could just walk in without security?” he said in an interview at his State Capitol office in Madison. “I don’t think that’s fair.”
Wisconsin Democrats, who have seen the state Supreme Court and state legislature steadily erode the influence they and Mr. Evers have over state voting rules, warned on Friday that the state’s most vulnerable voters would not be able to participate in the state’s democracy. .
“With today’s decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is making it harder to vote. It’s a slap in the face to democracy itself,” said Ben Wikler, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. “Our freedom to vote is under attack.”