Wisconsin Supreme Court to decide whether mobile voting vans can be used in future elections
MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in a case brought by Republicans seeking to ban the use of mobile ballot drop boxes in the state, where the presidential election is still in full swing.
Such vans — one van, actually — have been used just once, in Racine in 2022. They allow voters to cast ballots by mail in the two weeks leading up to the election. Racine, the Democratic National Committee and others say there is nothing in state law that prohibits the use of ballot drop boxes.
Whatever the court decides, it won’t affect the November election, since a ruling isn’t expected until later and no city or county was asked to use alternate voting locations for this election before the deadline passed. But the ruling will determine whether mobile voting locations can be used in future elections.
Republicans argue that operating mobile polling places violates state law because their repeated use increases the likelihood of voter fraudand that the vote in Racine was used to increase Democratic turnout.
Wisconsin law prohibits placing an early voting place in a location that favors a political party. There are other restrictions on early voting places, including a requirement that they be “as close as practicable to the clerk’s office.”
For the 2022 election, Racine County Clerk Tara McMenamin and the city “had a goal of making voting accessible to as many eligible voters as possible, and polling locations were as close to the county clerk’s office as possible while achieving that goal and complying with federal law,” the city’s attorney argued in court filings.
Racine bought his van with a grant from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. Republicans have been critical of the subsidies, calling the money “Zuckerbucks” which they said was used to influence turnout in Democratic areas.
Wisconsin voters in April a constitutional amendment approved a ban on the use of private money to organize elections.
The bus was used only to facilitate early in-person voting in the two weeks leading up to an election, McMenamin said. She said the vehicle was useful because it became too cumbersome for her staff to set up their equipment at remote polling places.
The campaign traveled across the city for two weeks, allowing voters to cast their ballots in person at 21 different locations.
Racine County Republican Party Chairman Ken Brown, represented by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission the day after the August 2022 primary, arguing that the bus violated state law. He argued that the bus was sent only to Democratic areas of the city in an illegal attempt to increase turnout.
McMenamin disputed the allegations, saying they showed a misunderstanding of the city’s constituencies, which traditionally vote Democratic.
“Whether or not McMenamin intended to create this turnout advantage for Democrats, that is exactly what she did through the locations she selected,” Brown argued in a brief filed with the state Supreme Court.
The Election Commission dismissed the complaint four days before the 2022 election, saying there was no probable cause to believe the law had been violated. Brown filed a lawsuit.
Brown filed a lawsuit and in January the case was filed in a Racine County court. judge sided with the Republicanswhich determined that state election laws do not permit the use of mobile polling stations.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court In June, it upheld that ruling pending the case’s hearing, effectively banning the use of mobile voting sites in the upcoming presidential election. The court also upheld the same rules that have been in place since 2016 for determining the location of early voting sites. The deadline for selecting those sites for use in the November election was in June.