The use of absentee ballot drop boxes in battleground Wisconsin is sharply down from 2020

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Absentee ballot drop boxes in the presidential battleground state of Wisconsin are only available in a small fraction of the places they were four years ago, with many conservative communities opting not to offer them for the upcoming election.

In 2020, more than 500 drop boxes were available for voters to return absentee ballots in more than 430 communities across the state. But as of Wednesday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission was aware of only 78 drop box sites in 42 communities statewide.

The count may actually be higher, elections administrator Meagan Wolfe said, because there is no requirement for the state's 1,850 local elections officials to report the use of drop boxes.

Milwaukee and Madison, the state's two largest cities and also Democratic strongholds, reported having 14 drop boxes each. Racine had seven. Most communities that reported having drop boxes only had one, often located near their city hall.

Wolfe said anyone wondering why their community doesn't have a drop box should ask their local officials.

More than 60 towns, villages and cities in nine counties have opted out of using the boxes for next month's elections, according to a tally by the group All Voting is Local.

Many are conservative communities. In Dodge County, the Republican sheriff recommended not to use them out of security concerns, but several communities have gone ahead and installed them.

In Wausau, the conservative mayor carted away the city's lone drop box — an action that's under investigation by the state Department of Justice. The drop box has since been returned and is in use.

Drop boxes had been used for years in Wisconsin, but their popularity exploded in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of voters casting ballots absentee is returning to pre-pandemic levels, Wolfe said Wednesday. Nearly 240,000 absentee ballots had been returned by Tuesday, which is slightly more than a third of the more than 700,000 that had been returned by this point in 2020, Wolfe said.

Voters in Wisconsin can begin to cast absentee ballots in person starting Tuesday. Former President Barack Obama, along with vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, planned to be in Madison on Tuesday to hold a rally to encourage early voting among Democrats.

Both Republicans and Democrats in Wisconsin supported drop boxes prior to the 2020 election, but their use became a partisan issue after Donald Trump lost to President Joe Biden in Wisconsin by just under 21,000 votes that year.

Trump and other Republicans stoked fears that drop boxes were not safe and suggested without evidence that their use increases the chances of voter fraud.

In 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which was then controlled by conservatives, ruled 4-3 in favor of a conservative law firm that challenged the use of unstaffed drop boxes outside of clerk offices, such as near libraries and other public spaces. The court ruled that drop boxes can only be located at offices staffed by election clerks, not at remote, unstaffed locations.

The state Supreme Court flipped to liberal control in 2023 and in July overturned that ruling, leaving it up to local communities to decide whether to use them.