The conservative majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday that ballot drop boxes were illegal in the state, and it didn’t take long for right wing election lie evangelists to declare the decision proof of a fraudulent 2020 vote, and even to demand again that the election results be overturned.
The COVID-19 pandemic moved Wisconsin election officials, backed by a memo from the state’s Election Commission, to install hundreds of drop boxes across the state. Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote for the court’s 4-3 majority Friday that “Ballot drop boxes appear nowhere in the detailed statutory system for absentee voting.”
Donald Trump, whose campaign filed an unsuccessful 2020 lawsuit to overturn Wisconsin’s election results based on the use of drop boxes, was first in line: “This means I won the very closely contested (not actually!) Wisconsin Presidential race because they used these corrupt and scandal-ridden Scam Boxes,” he wrote in a post on his social media website, Truth Social.
During a rally in Alaska, Trump said Democratic officials in Wisconsin “systematically violated the law to rig the 2020 presidential election.” Separately, he wrote that other states were “looking at, and studying” the state court’s “amazing” decision.
“Speaker Robin Vos has a decision to make!” Trump said. “Does Wisconsin RECLAIM the Electors, turn over the Election to the actual winner (by a lot!), or sit back and do nothing as our Country continues to go to HELL?” He referenced a legally impossible resolution to overturn the election results that sounded like the one pushed by State Rep. Tim Ramthun (R), who’s also a GOP candidate for governor.
In a video responding to the court’s ruling, Ramnthun said he had “a lot of joy in my heart.” The decision regarding drop boxes, he said, “begs the question: Was it illegal in 2020? I say yes, and there’s unfinished business there as well.” The candidate said in a statement that he was “elated beyond measure” at the decision and added: “Much more to come, buckle up.”
A post on John Solomon’s right-wing “Just The News” website similarly asserted, “Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling on drop boxes undercuts Democrats’ clean election claim.”
The article presented no evidence of the use of drop boxes leading to the counting of fraudulent votes — there is none. Instead, it argued that the decision was “evidence that a widely used mechanism for the 2020 election was illegal, undercutting Democratic claims that any irregularities in the contest were insufficient to sway outcomes.”
On the social media website Gettr, Steve Bannon commented on the ruling, “now DECERTIFY THE 2020 BIDEN ELECTORS.”
Tom Fitton, the heavily bicep’ed leader of the right-wing legal advocacy group Judicial Watch, said the court’s decision was “a historic vindication for Trump.”
“Zuckerboxes were one of the most visible ways that the unprecedented infusion of private money into the 2020 election led to disparate treatment of voters,” said another right-wing legal voice, Phillip Kline of the Amistad Project.
The Trump-campaign-linked group filed unsuccessful lawsuits seeking to overturn the 2020 election in multiple states. Kline was subpoenaed by the congressional Jan. 6 Committee in March.
