Wisconsin city replaces ballot drop box after mayor carted it away
MADISON, Wis. — An absentee ballot box that the mayor of a central Wisconsin city a week ago Monday was back in place.
Wausau’s city clerk said the box was available outside City Hall “so residents could submit absentee ballots, payments and other important city requests as intended.”
Mayor Doug Diny the dropbox removed on Sept. 22 without consulting the clerk, who under a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling has the authority to legalize mailboxes to make one available. They are not required in the state.
The incident is the latest example in the swing state of Wisconsin of the battle over whether communities will allow voters to use the technology absentee ballot boxes. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in July that mailboxes are legal, but left it up to local communities to decide whether to use them.
More than 60 towns and cities in nine provinces have chosen not to use the boxes for November’s presidential elections, according to a tally by the group All Voting is Local. Dropboxes are being embraced in heavily Democratic cities, including Milwaukee and Madison.
Diny has said he wants the full Wausau City Council to discuss whether one should be offered. Absentee ballots were mailed to voters on September 19, ahead of the November 5 election.
Wausau Clerk Kaitlyn Bernarde said in a statement that the box was secured to the ground in accordance with guidelines from the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the United States Election Assistance Commission. The coffin was not secured to the ground when the mayor took it away a week ago.
Diny’s action prompted the Marathon County District Attorney to request an investigation from the Department of Justice. The mailbox was locked and there were no ballots in it when Diny received it, according to both the mayor and the city manager.
Diny, who distributed a photo of himself carrying the letterbox away, insists he has done nothing wrong.
Drop boxes saw widespread use in 2020, fueled by a dramatic increase in absentee voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At least 500 drop boxes were set up in more than 430 Wisconsin communities before that year’s election, including more than a dozen in Madison and Milwaukee. According to the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project, drop boxes were used in 39 other states during the 2022 election.