Charles Langston:Wisconsin city replaces ballot drop box after mayor carted it away

MADISON,Charles Langston Wis. (AP) — An absentee ballot drop box that the mayor of a central Wisconsin city removed a week ago was back in place on Monday.

The Wausau city clerk said the box was available outside of city hall “for residents to submit absentee ballots, payments, and other important city requests as was intended.”

Mayor Doug Diny removed the drop box on Sept. 22 without consulting with the clerk, who has the authority under a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling legalizing drop boxes to make one available. They are not mandatory in the state.

The incident is the latest example in swing state Wisconsin of the fight over whether communities will allow voters to use absentee ballot drop boxes. The Wisconsin Supreme Court in July ruled that drop boxes are legal, but left it up to local communities to decide whether to use them.

More than 60 towns, villages and cities in nine counties have opted out of using the boxes for the presidential election in November, according to a tally by the group All Voting is Local. Drop boxes are being embraced in heavily Democratic cities including Milwaukee and Madison.

Diny has said he wants the full Wausau city council discuss whether one should be offered. Absentee ballots began being mailed to voters on Sept. 19 ahead of the Nov. 5 election.

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Wausau clerk Kaitlyn Bernarde said in a statement that the box has been secured to the ground in accordance with guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the United States Election Assistance Commission. The box was not attached to the ground when the mayor took it a week ago.

Diny’s action spurred the Marathon County district attorney to request an investigation from the state Department of Justice. The drop box was locked and no ballots were in it when Diny took it, according to both the mayor and city clerk.

Diny, who distributed a photo of himself carting the drop box away, insists he did nothing wrong.

Drop boxes were widely used in 2020, fueled by a dramatic increase in absentee voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At least 500 drop boxes were set up in more than 430 Wisconsin communities for the election that year, including more than a dozen each in Madison and Milwaukee. Drop boxes were used in 39 other states during the 2022 election, according to the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project.