A Wisconsin mayor removed a ballot drop box from outside city hall and relocated it indoors last week – a performance that underscores the tensions and misinformation that surround election administration and the topic of ballot drop boxes in the state.
Doug Diny, who donned a hardhat and gloves to move the drop box, claimed he did so because he was worried the box, which had not yet been fully installed and did not have any ballots in it, could have been tossed in the river. The city has since re-installed the drop box outside the Wausau municipal building.
Since 2020, the use of ballot drop boxes – secured boxes in which voters can return absentee ballots – has been a fixture of debate over the administration of elections in Wisconsin.
With Covid-19 surging during the 2020 presidential election, about 60% of voters cast ballots early or by mail. By 2021, there were 570 ballot drop boxes in place across the state, according to the Wisconsin elections commission.
In 2022, after conservative groups filed suit to ban the use of the drop boxes, the Wisconsin supreme court – then ruled by a conservative majority – outlawed the voting method. In July, a year after voters elected a liberal judge to the court and reversed the ideological balance of the court, the state supreme court overturned its previous decision. With just four months to go before the 2024 election, election clerks across the state were free to introduce drop boxes at their discretion.
The ruling has not cooled tensions over the use of the secured voting boxes. With unfounded fears that US elections are vulnerable to fraud still swirling years after Donald Trump spread the lie that the 2020 election was rife with irregularities, the reintroduction of drop boxes in Wisconsin has repeatedly spurred controversy.
In Dodge county, Wisconsin, the political outlet WisPolitics first reported that some municipal clerks who sought to bring back drop boxes reversed course after the county’s Republican sheriff urged them not to use them, claiming they could cause the perception of fraud.
In Brookfield, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, residents rallied for a ballot drop box to be installed for the 2024 November elections. But after the municipal clerk, whose office oversees election administration, turned the decision about drop boxes over to the common council, the council voted not to offer residents that option. Mike Hallquist, a local official in Brookfield who voted in favor of installing a drop box in the city, said that while “state law definitely provides the clerk their ability to make that decision”, he was comfortable weighing in “because it was at the request of the clerk”.
The Republican candidate for the US Senate, Eric Hovde, has even weighed in on the topic of drop boxes, calling on poll watchers to monitor them in majority-Democratic cities in a recording obtained by the Washington Post. Hovde reportedly asked: “Who’s watching to see how many illegal ballots are being stuffed?” The suggestion that ballot drop boxes would likely be “stuffed” with fake ballots echoes the debunked claim that circulated after the 2020 election that people had fraudulently cast ballots using drop boxes in swing states.
It was in this fraught environment that Diny made a show of relocating an absentee drop box – a stunt that garnered instant headlines and outcry from voting rights groups in the state. Diny, who was not available for comment, has vowed to bring the issue before Wausau’s city council – although its members almost certainly lack the legal standing to make such a decision unilaterally, and the city clerk, who does have the authority, remains in support of the drop box.
In an email to the Guardian, the Wausau city council president, Lisa Rasmussen, forcefully rejected Diny’s actions and emphasized that the Wisconsin elections commission and the Wisconsin supreme court give election clerks the discretion to use drop boxes – not local government.
“Elected officials do not have the authority to make those choices. So, if the mayor opts to ask the council to decide something they have no authority to consider, it is likely all for show,” wrote Rasmussen. “I also remain hopeful that there is a measure of accountability for those actions since this type of thing could happen in any town and it is just not appropriate.”
On 2 October, a group of Wausau voters and voting rights groups filed a complaint with the US Department of Justice, asking for an investigation and writing that “Mr Diny may have broken federal law by using his official position to interfere with citizens’ right to vote”. The Wisconsin department of justice has taken over the investigation, and Rasmussen confirmed that justice department agents had entered Wausau’s city hall to investigate.
Diny is currently under investigation by the Portage county sheriff to determine if he violated the law in relocating the drop box.
