A lawsuit filed Thursday in Dane County Circuit Court against the Wisconsin Elections Commission targets voting rules in Wisconsin – a key battleground state – in anticipation of the 2024 presidential election.
The three plaintiffs in the suit include D.C.-based liberal political action committee, Priorities USA, the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans, and Waunakee resident William Franks, Jr.
Plaintiffs’ argue The Wisconsin Constitution guarantees the right to vote as a fundamental right that is inherent and foundational to free government and that “Absentee voting has long been an important part of Wisconsin elections.”
“As far back as the Civil War, Wisconsinites have been able to exercise the right to vote by casting an absentee ballot,” court documents state.
According to court documents, over the past fifteen years, more than 4.6 million absentee ballots have been cast in federal elections in Wisconsin. That’s one out of every five ballots cast across eight elections. In the 2018 midterm general election, 575,000 Wisconsin voters used absentee ballots.
“Driven in large part by the COVID-19 pandemic, absentee voting surged in the November 2020 general election, with more than 2 million Wisconsinites successfully casting absentee ballots,” court documents state.
Plaintiff’s also note drop boxes immediately became one of the most popular methods for returning absentee ballots.
“In 2020, thousands of voters used hundreds of drop boxes without incident,” court documents state.
As previously reported, in 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruled that absentee ballots must be delivered by mail or in person to a local clerk’s office or designated alternate site, not to a drop box which had frequently been utilized during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the current matter, plaintiffs’ said, “Election mail delay is well documented in Wisconsin. In the 2018 midterm elections, one of the five lowest-performing processing and delivery centers in the entire nation was the facility located in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, with nearly 14% of election and political mail delivered later than expected.”
Wisconsin law requires ballots to arrive by election day.
Plaintiffs’ further argued, “Drop boxes allow absentee voters to return their ballots through a convenient, safe, and reliable method that ensures that they will be returned on time. The court-imposed prohibition on drop boxes, by contrast, has contributed to voter disenfranchisement.”
The Wisconsin Law Journal reached out to the Wisconsin Elections Commision, but no one was available to comment prior to publication.
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