A Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that cracked down on the use of ballot drop boxes gave former President Donald Trump some news to cheer about on Tuesday.
Taking on his social media app, Truth Social, Trump touted the decision made last week as one that vindicates his claims of a stolen election in 2020, even as local officials spoke out against the ruling that the Wisconsin Election Commission had overstepped its authority when issuing guidance to local election clerks to allow the use of drop boxes to return absentee ballots in the contest.
“The Democrats now lost Wisconsin! The Cheating and Irregularities were unbelievable. So much for the ‘Big Lie’ — and to think other States were far worse, but they’re doing the deep dive also. Our 2020 Presidential Election was indeed the ‘Big Lie’, IN REVERSE!” Trump said in his post.
THIRD JUDGE ORDERS GABLEMAN NOT TO DESTROY WISCONSIN 2020 ELECTION RECORDS
The use of absentee drop boxes exploded across the state and country in 2020 as election officials tried to minimize voters’ interactions with each other during the coronavirus pandemic. However, Trump and his allies have long argued that bypassing the legislature to make such changes amounted to election maleficence, a view the high court agreed with in its 4-3 ruling on Friday. Voters must personally return their absentee ballots, the high court ruled in the case first brought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on behalf of two Wisconsin voters.
The Milwaukee Common Council released a statement on Monday listing out members who “strongly and fundamentally” disagree with the decision.
“Ballot drop boxes make the practice of voting easier and more accessible, and we fear this decision will only further disenfranchise voters who are elderly, hospitalized, housebound, lack access to transportation, or face other impediments to personally delivering their ballots,” the council statement adds. “Elections are a core tenet of our democracy, and we should always be striving to ensure that voting in them is as easy as possible. Sadly, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling does just the opposite at a time when roughly 2 million Wisconsinites voted absentee in the last presidential election, and 66 counties utilized drop boxes as an appropriate means to ensure their residents can cast their vote.”
Gov. Tony Evers (D) also castigated the state Supreme Court ruling as “another in a long line of Wisconsin Republicans’ successes to make it harder for Wisconsinites to exercise their right to vote, to undermine our free, fair, and secure elections, and to threaten our democracy.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Now-President Joe Biden defeated Trump by nearly 21,000 votes in Wisconsin, a result that has been upheld by recounts and court rulings that have rejected assertions of widespread fraud. Trump’s continued insistence that the election was stolen, despite refutations by White House lawyers and other top officials, up until the Capitol riot has been a focus of the House Jan. 6 Committee, which held its most recent hearing on Tuesday.
Trump was seemingly undeterred by such findings. “Thank you to the Great Patriots of Wisconsin for never giving up on Election Integrity. They understood the Election Scam very early, and did something about it,” he added in his Truth Social post.
Still, as the Washington Examiner’s Byron York notes, the ruling is unlikely to “save” Trump — in part because overturning the election was not at the heart of the lawsuit at play. “As for Trump, the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision won’t help his idiosyncratic and backward-looking crusade to overturn results in some of the states he lost in the 2020 election. Nothing will. The point of the Wisconsin drop box case was to look ahead, not back,” York wrote.
