Wisconsin Supreme Court reverses previous decision, allows absentee ballot drop boxes

In a move that alters election rules heading into Wisconsin's high-stakes presidential election, the state Supreme Court on Friday overturned the previous conservative majority's two-year-old ruling that effectively barred the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in the state.The 4-3 ruling meansthe freestanding, mailbox-like drop boxes — which saw increased use amid the COVID-19 pandemic before the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2022 prohibited their use outside of clerk's offices — can again be used to collect absentee ballots this fall. The court's four liberal justices, Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Dallet, Jill Karofsky and Janet Protasiewicz, sided with Democratic groups who argued the state Supreme Court improperly ruled in July 2022 that absentee ballot drop boxes could not be used in the state except in clerk's offices. People are also reading… "We conclude that (state statute) allows the use of ballot drop boxes," Bradley wrote in the order. "For the reasons set forth below, we determi...