(NewsNation) — Voters in Wisconsin will again be able to use drop boxes for absentee ballots in upcoming elections after the state Supreme Court restored their legality, reversing a 2022 high court decision that determined the deposit boxes should be prohibited.
In a 4-3 decision, justices ruled the Supreme Court erred two years ago in determining that unmanned drop boxes were illegal because they were not specifically authorized under Wisconsin state law.
Since then, petitioners, including Priorities USA and the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans, have challenged the ruling that absentee ballots could only be dropped off in person at a local clerk’s office or returned by U.S. mail.
Justices agreed to hear challenges to the 2022 ruling, which took away what attorney David Fox called a “convenient and reliable option” that makes voting in Wisconsin easier.
Friday’s ruling does not force or require municipal clerks’ offices to use drop boxes, justices wrote, but rather, that clerks can lawfully use drop boxes at their discretion.
“If you put the ballot in the mail, you don’t know when it’ll get delivered, and voters worry about whether it will get delivered in time and whether it will be counted,” Fox said, according to Wisconsin Public Radio. “But, if you put it in a drop box by the deadline, you know that it’s going straight to election officials and it will be counted.”
Friday’s ruling comes four months ahead of November’s presidential election in which Wisconsin is expected to play a key role. President Joe Biden won Wisconsin in 2020 by about 20,000 votes with just 1% separating him from then-Republican incumbent Donald Trump.
Mail-in ballots were used significantly in the 2020 election due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Associated Press, more than 500 drop-off boxes were placed in more than 430 Wisconsin communities, including in Democrat-friendly Madison and Milwaukee.
The 2022 ban on drop-off boxes was put in place by a conservative-leaning state Supreme Court. However, the court shifted to being more liberal when Justice Janet Protasiewicz was elected to the high court.
Polls show Trump leading Biden in several swing states, including Wisconsin, and that the former president’s lead has grown since the first presidential debate in which Biden struggled.
Fox told Wisconsin Public Radio that the Supreme Court addressed the wrong issue in 2022 in banning drop-off boxes. He said after Friday’s ruling that the majority of justices agreed that there is nothing in Wisconsin state law that is inconsistent with a local clerk deciding to use drop-off boxes as a ballot delivery method.
The Wisconsin Republican Party pushed back on the Supreme Court ruling on Friday, calling the decision “a setback for both the separation of powers and public trust in the state’s election process.”
“This latest attempt by leftist justices to placate their far-left backers will not go unanswered by voters,” Wisconsin Republican Chairman Brian Schimming said in a statement released by the party.
In a dissenting opinion, one of the three conservative justices, Rebecca Bradley, wrote that Friday’s ruling was fueled by political motivations.
“The majority in this case overrules (the 2022 decision) not because it is legally erroneous, but because the majority finds it politically inconvenient,” Bradley wrote in Friday’s decision. “The majority’s activism marks another triumph of political power over legal principle in this court.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
