We start tonight with the question of whether the widespread use of absentee ballot drop
boxes will be coming back for the November election.
This week, Wisconsin's liberal majority Supreme Court decided to consider an appeal to the
court's ruling of less than two years ago that the drop boxes are illegal and that ballots
must be personally delivered to the municipal clerk.
The court's conservative dissent harshly condemned the new order, calling it, quote,
another shameless effort by the majority to readjust the balance of political power in Wisconsin.
Approved by the state elections commission for use in 2020 during the COVID pandemic,
more than 500 absentee ballot drop boxes across Wisconsin allowed contactless voting.
But when Donald Trump lost the election, his blame included the boxes, casting doubt
on the results.
In 2022, the then-conservative majority Wisconsin High Court ruled they were illegal for future
elections.
Fast forward to today, and they're up for consideration again.
Here in now, senior political reporter Zach Schultz is here with Moore and Hizack.
Hello, Fred.
So how unusual is it for a court to reach back to decided law and consider an appeal?
Well, it doesn't happen very often, but there are some high-profile examples on a
national scale, Dobbs overturning Roe v. Wade just a couple of years ago.
It's obviously a pretty big one that has political ramifications.
But there's actually precedent here for that in Wisconsin.
Back in 2016, the conservative Supreme Court ruled that the legislature had oversight over
the Department of Public Instruction and the state superintendent.
They did not have oversight.
Flash forward just a couple of years later, in the makeup of that court change, the Justice
Kelly joined the court, and he ruled that they did have oversight.
So they overturned an example.
When I asked him why, he said that was because that original decision was fractured.
It wasn't a solid majority that made it up.
It was concurring opinions.
And the reason that's important in this example, Frederica, is because the Teigen decision from
July of 2022 was also a very fractured majority opinion.
In that case, Justice Brian Hagadourn joined the majority for only about half of the actual
majority opinion.
He concurred with only 30 of 87 paragraphs in the entire decision.
There were multiple concurrences.
And so the only thing that stands out of that original decision is that drop boxes are not
valid in state law because they are not allowed and they're not specifically allowed.
But they're also not not allowed.
And that's what this decision is going to take a look at again.
So I can see through your explanation how this is potentially ripe for that appeal.
But the conservative dissent to this order says that by granting a quote, the majority
aims to increase the electoral prospects of its preferred political party.
Is it proven that ballot drop boxes helped Democrats?
Well, certainly in 2020 more Democrats took advantage of drop boxes and absentee voting
than Republicans did.
Historically, that's not always the case.
President states vote largely by mail.
Donald Trump himself voted absentee in Florida in prior presidential elections.
But it was Trump who made the case against absentee voting in 2020 and the lead up to
that election that convinced a lot of Republicans not to trust that process.
And then it was Trump after the election that made it part of his conspiracy theories about
fraud in the electorate that turned Republicans against it.
But importantly, Republicans, including the Republican Party of Wisconsin, is trying to
shift back to absentee balloting for this election.
They've made that a big part of their platform as they understand it's extremely important
to trying to win elections.
So if the conservative minority on Wisconsin's high court thinks that it's a political kind
of decision on the part of the liberal majority, wouldn't outlawing these boxes mean the former
conservative majority was aiming to increase the electoral electoral prospects of its preferred
political party?
Well, certainly the decision fell in line with what the standard bear that time former
president Trump wanted and what the MAGA opinion throughout most of the country was is that
drop boxes are ripe for fraud.
That certainly hasn't been proven in most cases and certainly wasn't proven in Wisconsin.
And there's arguments that places in rural Wisconsin would benefit just as much from
drop boxes because clerks aren't always present for someone to come in and vote absentee in
person early and the drop box would be a nice easy way for someone to drop off a ballot.
Rural Wisconsin being slightly more conservative than urban Wisconsin.
Right.
What about the issue of sowing chaos in November for election officials having to give guidance
to clerks?
How likely is it that this would continue to be litigated?
Well it's unlikely in the sense that the Supreme Court is fast tracking as they want
oral arguments by May likely decision by June so there'll be plenty of time before we get
to the August primary in November before a decision would have to come up in that case.
So the decision would be in place.
It's unlikely it could be appealed to the United States Supreme Court so that decision
would be final but there's always lawsuits in the last couple of months before an election.
How surprising is it that it's fast tracked in this way?
I mean I get it that they're up against the November election but this Supreme Court seems
to be making some moves differently than the last court.
That's right with the liberal majority took over they changed some of the administrative
process to make sure that things could go along smoothly and quickly in a lot of these
expedited cases and in part that's because traditionally the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court has a lot of power over how fast decisions move along and that Supreme Court Chief Justice
is a conservative.
So the liberals have created a new process to make things faster in this case expediting
this case so that they can have a decision before the end of this term which will affect
the fall election.
Alright it's actuals thanks very much.
Thank you.
Sorry I had a minute to fill there so I threw that at you.
Thank you.
I never got a time cue from Steve.
Did I miss those or did they not come through?
Maybe he wasn't giving them to you.
Okay I just wasn't sure where we were on time at one point I wrapped and then you kept
going so I wasn't sorry.
He obviously I think they have to press two buttons at once or something in there.
Okay that's fine I just want to make sure I wasn't missing anything because I had muted
the mic and we'd done the thing so I wanted to make sure it wasn't a technical issue
like before.
No it wasn't you did a great job as usual alright.