Wisconsin officials can use local drop boxes to collect ballots for this year's elections, the swing state's Supreme Court narrowly ruled Friday.
The 4-3 decision reversed a ruling two years ago that barred the use of drop boxes outside election offices in the Badger State, the Associated Press reported. And those in election offices could only be used by voters appearing in person.
The move came after a battle over abortion rights last year shifted control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from conservative to liberal justices following the election of Democratic-backed Janet Protaswiecz.
That change led to a February request by the progressive group Priorities USA for the court to reconsider its 2022 drop-box ruling.
In the majority ruling, liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley said it "does not force or require that any municipal clerks use drop boxes."
"It merely acknowledges what (state law) has always meant: that clerks may lawfully utilize secure drop boxes in an exercise of their statutorily-conferred discretion," she wrote.
The court's three conservative justices accused their liberal counterparts of overturning the earlier decision because it was "politically inconvenient."
"The majority's activism marks another triumph of political power over legal principle in this court," wrote Justice Rebecca Bradley, who's not related to Ann Walsh Bradley.
In 2020, at least 500 drop boxes were set up in more than 430 Wisconsin communities, with more than a dozen each in the heavily Democratic cities of Milwaukee and Madison.
President Joe Biden barely won the state that year and Democrats believe that making it easier for voters to cast ballots in drop boxes will improve his chances of again defeating former President Donald Trump there.
Trump and his Republican allies have repeatedly alleged that drop boxes enabled cheating in 2020, without offering evidence.
In December 2020, then- Attorney General Bill Barr, a Trump nominee, told AP that a Justice Department probe was unable to find "fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome" in the vote.
At least 29 other states permit the use of ballot drop boxes, according to the nonprofit, nonpartisan U.S. Vote Foundation.
