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At this hour we are still waiting to hear if the United States Supreme Court will allow the U.S. Postal Service to move forward with new rules on how they will handle absentee ballots.
The rules come from the Trump administration, and would likely mean millions of mailed-in ballots would not be processed by the Postal Service and never make it to clerk's offices around the country by election day.
Currently, a U.S. federal appeals court has upheld a lower court that blocked the rules from moving forward, but the final word will come from the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, clerks in Wisconsin are moving forward with their election plans.
That includes Dung County Clerk Andrew Mercil, President of the Wisconsin County Clerks Association.
Thanks for your time today.
Thanks for having me.
So while we await this ruling from the Supreme Court, is this decision hanging over your head, or do you have too much else going on to worry about it for right now?
Well, there's quite a bit going on in Wisconsin as it relates to getting ready for the elections this fall, as are all the 72 county clerks.
But we are keeping a close watch on what the Supreme Court might decide to do as it relates to this ruling.
Now, in the state of Wisconsin, there are already 260,000 absentee ballot requests that have been made, and of those, around 75,000 ballots have already been mailed out.
So they're already in the process in the system, and we want to ensure that voters feel comfortable making sure that their absentee ballot, as of now, will still be processed the normal way it would through the mail system.
So what advice have you been given by the Wisconsin Elections Commission on what you would do in case the Supreme Court says no, these rules can go forward?
Yeah, so we have several opportunities in the state of Wisconsin, if that were to happen.
So if they want to try to present a portal that the U.S. Postal Service would have to make sure that all the ballots would be processed through, that portal still doesn't exist.
So we've gotten indications from the United States Postal Service that even if they still wanted to implement this rule, there's not the resources or ability in which to do what the executive order from this past spring would put in place.
So for now, our Postal Service individuals in the state of Wisconsin have ensured us that all absentee ballots will still be processed the normal way that they have.
So these rules were born out of conspiracy theories that came from the 2020 election, despite where these ideas came from.
If there was time to implement it properly, would some of these rules make sense if they were done for future elections?
I'm going to say no.
The state of Wisconsin has a really strict system in which that we use to process absentee ballots for individuals.
However, now there's opportunities because the United States Postal Service has changed from local processing to more centralized processing.
Here in Western Wisconsin, all of our absentee ballots are actually sent into Minneapolis, St. Paul for processing before their process back.
So there's already been a little bit of a delay in making sure that people can get their absentee ballots returned in a timely manner.
So we've encouraged individuals to make sure that they get their absentee ballots.
They have to be mailed out by September 17, right, 47 days before the election.
And when they receive them to get them back in the mail as soon as possible.
The other options are that a person could take their absentee ballot that they've received in the mail back to their municipal clerk at their town village or city hall.
They could also return them during what we call in-person absentee voting, which is starting on October 20.
It's a good opportunity for a person to bring back their absentee ballot to the clerk at that time.
Or they can always take their absentee ballot and return it to the polling location on election day.
So there's many outlets in which individuals and voters can still cast their ballot and make sure that their voice is heard.
I know since 2020 drop boxes became unconstitutional or now constitutional again.
There were controversial in some areas.
Would you encourage along the same lines of what we're just talking about clerks to have more drop boxes available as another option?
Absolutely. The most recent court ruling says it's up to the discretion of the municipal clerk on whether they want to use a drop box.
But we've seen several municipal clerks across the state of Wisconsin. There's over 1,850 of them, right, that are trying to make sure that there's a drop box available.
Some of them have them from before that they have been re-implementing in usage. Some are ordering new drop boxes.
Here in Dunn County, we've tried to make sure that if a clerk wants a drop box that we're helping provide that funding so that the voters can feel safe that their ballot is going to be cast in this election and all future elections.
So another issue related to the elections.
The Department of Homeland Security recently announced Wisconsin as one of a handful of states where they're pursuing investigations into non-citizen voting.
Have you heard of any clerks in Wisconsin being contacted as part of these investigations?
We have not yet. We are mostly anticipating that they will be targeting larger urban areas such as Madison and Milwaukee.
But we have not heard of any federal investigators contacting any of the 72 county clerks or municipal clerks as of yet.
Now, I don't know what's going to happen in the next coming weeks.
But we're wanting to make sure that everybody is prepared as well as they can be to know their legal rights of what they should be doing if an investigator tries to contact them.
And so we're trying to train as best we can across the state of Wisconsin.
All right.
Dunn County clerk Andrew Mercil.
Thanks for your time today.
Thanks for having me.
So much. We appreciate it. That was good information.
I appreciate getting that out into the public.
Yeah, we really appreciate any opportunity we can have. So thanks for having me, guys. I really appreciate it.
All right. Take care.
Bye-bye.