Wisconsin Supreme Court drop kicks drop boxes
Though Common Sense Wisconsin executive director Joe Handrick says bigger threat is ballot harvesting
“Unlawful votes do not dilute lawful votes so much as they pollute them, which in turn pollutes the integrity of the results. When the level of pollution is high enough, the fog creates obscurity, and the institution of voting loses its credibility as a method of ensuring the people’s continued consent to be governed.” — Justice Rebecca Bradley
I’m sure that a lot of people are wondering, but, yes indeed, justice Rebecca Bradley has sobered up after partying with textualist moonshine instead of drinking the real thing in last week’s egregious Supreme Court open records decision.
She was back on her game in Teigen v Wisconsin Elections Commission, a ruling that absentee ballot drop boxes are illegal in the state and, barring a change in election law, can’t be used in future elections. Bradley authored the majority opinion, in which she proclaimed that the unlawful use of drop boxes weakened Wisconsinites’ faith that the 2020 election produced an outcome reflective of their will.
That point underscores the whole election integrity issue: The election wasn’t stained because people were hacking voting machines and carting around suitcases full of ballots, it was stained because the administrative state—state elections officials—brazenly rewrote state election laws and allowed millions of ineligible people to vote, along with who-knows-how-many fabricated ballots attained through ballot harvesting.
Ballot harvesting, by the way, which the court did not address, is the real threat to election integrity, says former lawmaker and Common Sense Wisconsin executive director Joe Handrick. I’ll get to that later, but first the drop boxes.
The decision was 4-3, with zigzagging justice Brian Hagedorn this time joining the consistently conservative justices (chief justice Annette Ziegler and justices Rebecca Bradley and Patience Roggensack) to form a majority over consistently liberal justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Jill Karofsky, and Rebecca Dallet.
The lawsuit, filed by two Wisconsin voters, officially challenged two documents produced prior to the 2020 election by the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC), one of which authorized drop boxes in multiple locations that could be manned or unmanned, temporary or permanent. The other permitted a family member “or another person” to return absentee ballots to the municipal clerk on behalf of the absentee voter.
The case bypassed the appeals court after the circuit court ruled against the WEC and issued a permanent injunction. The WEC appealed.
“We hold the documents are invalid because ballot drop boxes are illegal under Wisconsin statutes,” Bradley wrote in the decision. “An absentee ballot must be returned by mail or the voter must personally deliver it to the municipal clerk at the clerk’s office or a designated alternate site.”
The road to hell is paved with good intentions …