Wisconsin voters can once again return ballots by drop box, state high court rules

MADISON, Wis. — Voters in Wisconsin once again have the option to return absentee ballots via drop box, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled.

The 4-3 decision released Friday reverses a near-total ban on ballot drop boxes, which was handed down by the state's high court in 2022.

Friday's ruling comes just four months before November's presidential decision in a state where close elections are the norm. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won Wisconsin by just over 20,000 votes, which was a statewide margin of victory of less than 1 percentage point.

In 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court concluded in another 4-3 ruling that unsupervised ballot drop boxes outside of clerk's offices are illegal, because they're not specifically authorized in Wisconsin law.

But since then, the balance of the state's highest court has shifted.

Liberals gained a majority last August when newly elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz took office to replace retiring conservative Justice Patience Roggensack.

A majority of justices agreed earlier this year to hear a challenge from the progressive group Priorities USA, seeking to overturn the drop box prohibition.

Conservatives on the court opposed taking up the case, citing the legal principle that compels courts to honor precedent.

"Finding the decision politically inconvenient, and emboldened by a new makeup of the court, this new majority embraces the opportunity to overturn [the 2022 ruling]," Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote this spring in a dissent joined by Chief Justice Annette Ziegler. "The majority's decision to do so will upset the status quo of election administration mere months before a presidential election and lead to chaos and confusion for Wisconsin voters and election officials."

Wisconsin's