The Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ) confirmed on Oct. 3 its criminal investigators were looking into the removal of Wausau, Wisconsin’s sole absentee drop box by Republican Mayor Doug Diny.
Back on Sept. 22, Diny publicly wheeled away the city’s sole ballot drop box outside Wausau City Hall and photographed himself doing it. Diny, a conservative, is opposed to drop boxes and said he removed the box in question because it had not been bolted to the ground. The box was not officially open for use, and the slot to drop ballots was locked while waiting for the Department of Public Works to bolt it to the ground.
Diny sparked a massive controversy, and although city clerk Kaitlyn Bernarde reinstated a new drop box, secured and opened for ballot drop-offs, the outcry from activist groups, elected officials and voters got the ball rolling all the way to the attorney general's office.
Seemingly overnight, Wausau’s ballot box grabbed the attention of Wisconsinites and the nation, propelling the ongoing conversation about voting access into the spotlight.
So, how did Wausau make national news?
A day after Diny removed the drop box on Sept. 22, Bernarde, who approved the installation of the box, filed a report of “election irregularity.”
Wisconsin law gives municipal clerks or board of elections commissioners the authority to install drop boxes and decide where a drop box shall be located, as long as the location does not favor one party over the other. The law did not allocate authority to a municipality's mayor or its city council.
Then, on Sept. 27, the drop box had still not been returned to the clerk’s office, so she filed a second report to the Marathon County District Court and delivered a letter to the mayor requesting for the return of the drop box by noon that day.
In this letter, Bernarde also stated Diny’s removal of the drop box before it could be secured along with his “ongoing keeping and concealing of the drop box have infringed on my [Benarde’s] office’s ability to administer this election.”
“I firmly believe that drop boxes can be a secure and convenient customer service tool to help our department work towards our goal of helping every eligible voter be able to cast their ballot,” Bernarde wrote.
The Wausau Common Council saw an amended resolution proposed by Diny on Oct. 7 that would approve $3,000 in funding for drop box security. The original would have advised the clerk not to use the drop box.
Diny requested a resolution be drafted based on one by the city of Brookfield. In August, the City of Brookfield Common Council voted 10-4 in favor of a resolution approving the city clerk’s decision to not use drop boxes for the upcoming presidential election.
In the Oct. 3 email where Bernarde recommended the council not take up this resolution before it was amended, she addressed security measures, saying her office was implementing several security and transparency measures including:
- A 24/7 security camera is added to monitor the box
- The box is bolted to the sidewalk
- The box has a small and wide opening that allows only an envelope or paper to fit through
- Two staff members collect and record ballots on a chain of custody log, in turn securing returned ballots in a previously established procedure for ballots sent through the mail
A drop box is now secured in accordance with guidelines from the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the United States Election Assistance Commission, according to Bernarde. Despite the presence of a box, the DOJ has opened an investigation.
The amended resolution by Diny was changed from its original intent on removing the drop box to instead focus on improving security measures. It now says the mayor “reviewed video surveillance capabilities and determined inadequate nighttime lighting” and “the Front Door Camera is at the end of its service life with inadequate coverage day or night.”
The Common Council decided not to move forward with this resolution during a public meeting on Oct. 8. The drop box remained as it was.
The head of the Common Council Lisa Rasmussen told The Daily Cardinal that decisions regarding the drop box fell under the authority of the clerk, not the council members. The council's view on this resolution possibly pushed the mayor to amend it.
“The mayor has expenditure authority himself, without approval from anybody, for $5,000, so if those items were important to him, and they were timely, he could have purchased those items at any point,” Rasmussen said. “He brought that to the council looking to push this voting box issue into the council’s purview, and he’s really asking us to make decisions that we don’t need to make.”
When asked about concerns for the drop box’s security, Rasmussen said the reason they found out who moved the drop box in the first place was because of the security camera.
“[Diny] was captured on security cameras, so the idea that the box isn’t secure? It has a camera on it,” Rasmussen said. “It was a clear enough camera that they identified him doing it.”
Voting rights advocates, elected officials rally voters around drop box access
The drop box’s removal ignited outcry among voting rights advocates, elected officials and voters across the state.
Directly after the incident occurred, Gov. Tony Evers took to Twitter calling for the drop box to be restored.
“As elected officials, we should be working to make it easier — not harder — for every eligible Wisconsinite to cast their ballot,” he said. “That’s democracy.”
Voting rights organizations such as the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign called for an investigation on this “attack against democracy” in the days after the box’s removal and return.
“We value democracy, and when elected officials like the mayor in Wausau abuse their power and trample over the will of the people, there must be accountability,” WDC Executive Director Nick Ramos said at a Sep. 26 press conference. “The ballot is the cornerstone of our democracy, and ensuring that every eligible voter can cast their ballot safely, securely and conveniently should be a top priority.”
While the box has been returned and opened for use, Wausau voter Nancy Stencil saw Diny’s actions as the mayor “trying to sow seeds of distrust” surrounding voting methods.
Stencil is not alone in this sentiment. Kay Palmer, the president of the League of Women Voters of Marathon County, told the Cardinal the move erodes trust and creates a disconnect between officials and voters.
“This is a great mechanism to erode confidence that our local citizens have in using the ballot box in voting,” Palmer said, adding that the controversy surrounding Wausau’s drop box may lead to people viewing elected officials “as not being straightforward, honest and truthful” in their actions and intentions.
At the original press conference held by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign in Madison on Sept. 26, disability advocates highlighted the importance of ballot drop boxes for accessibility particularly for disabled, minority and senior voters.
“As an individual with disabilities, it makes it very difficult sometimes due to weather and other issues to get to the polls. Yet our voice matters,” Nicki Vander Meulen, a member of the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education, said at the conference. “Our voices will be silenced without these drop boxes.”
The ‘swinging’ state of ballot drop box access in Wisconsin
During the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump and Republicans criticized the use of ballot drop boxes and alleged that drop boxes are vulnerable to voter fraud, resulting in near-total ban of drop boxes across Wisconsin despite the fact that the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission disclosed that there was no evidence of voter fraud associated with drop boxes during the election.
In 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative majority limited the use of drop boxes in a 4-3 decision, ruling that only the voter could return their ballot and drop boxes could only be placed in local election clerks’ offices.
Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s victory in April 2023 flipped court control from conservative to liberal, opening the door for drop box access to be restored in time for the Nov. 5 election following a 4-3 decision split along ideological lines.
Wisconsinites have used drop boxes increasingly over the last 10 years. During the 2020 presidential election, 528 drop boxes were used across Wisconsin, and 41% of all U.S. absentee ballots were cast via drop boxes.
Clara Strecker is a copy chief for The Daily Cardinal. She also covers state news.
