Jay Heck on Ballot Drop Boxes and Wisconsin Voters in 2024

Frederica Freyberg:
We expect to talk with Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler ahead of their state convention next month.
On absentee ballot drop boxes, the Republican Party weighed in against their use in a Wisconsin lawsuit before the state Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments this week. The case seeks to overturn a ruling made by the court two years ago in a case referred to as Teigen, which barred the use of drop boxes after the 2020 election because law did not expressly allow their use.

Rebecca Dallet:
Teigen, the principle of it, or Teigen, is that somehow if something is not explicitly stated in the statute that it can’t be done. Isn’t that, that principle, that’s the principle that turns everything else on its head.

Jill Karofsky:
In Teigan, what if we just got it wrong? What if we made a mistake? Are we now supposed to just perpetuate that mistake into the future?

Frederica Freyberg:
At the same time, Common Cause Wisconsin argued for their use. Its executive director, Jay Heck, joins us now. And Jay, nice to see you.

Jay Heck:
Great to be with you, Fred, and good to see you again.

Frederica Freyberg:
So in your mind, should Wisconsin voters expect to see the use of absentee ballot drop boxes for upcoming elections, from what you heard in oral arguments?

Jay Heck:
Well, if the oral arguments are any indication about what the court might do, I am very positive or have a very good positive feeling about what the outcome might be. You know, one thing it’s important to note is that we have had drop boxes in Wisconsin for a number of years and of course, most famously during 2020, in the pandemic, they were a means for many thousands of Wisconsinites around the state to be able to return their absentee ballots in a safe, secure way. Rural voters, urban voters, young voters, old voters, people with disabilities, they’re a good thing. Wisconsin is now the only state in the upper Midwest, only non-red, deep red state that doesn’t allow the use of them.

Frederica Freyberg:
So but the concern on the part of Republicans is that those boxes could result in fraud with ballot harvesting and the unsecured nature of them. What about that?

Jay Heck:
Well, those are the — those are the suspicions of election deniers and conspiracy theorists. During the 2020 election, not a single incident of a drop box being tampered with or fraud or any of these things. This is the specter that is constantly raised to try to reduce the ability of Wisconsinites to be able to vote safely by absentee ballots, or sometimes even at polling places. So there’s nothing behind those fears, and they ought to be available and hopefully will be for 2024, so that we can have more voices and more people’s votes counted rather than fewer.

Frederica Freyberg:
So interestingly, the state GOP is now pushing early voting, as we expressed to its chair. That’s a sea change for Republicans. But now they’re trying to figure out how they’ll promote or dissuade the use of drop boxes, depending what the Supreme Court does here. It seems like this could be kind of complicated messaging.

Jay Heck:
Well, it will be, although you know, it — early, early voting, both early voting and absentee voting, which is the same, is — it benefits voters of all persuasions, not just liberals or Democrats. Everybody benefits by being able to cast their vote when it’s convenient for them to do so. And so I think the Republican Party and it sounds like they’re wising up even on the drop boxes, is that they will urge their voters to utilize those drop boxes. They may continue to also raise the specter that there could be fraud in case their side doesn’t win. That’s often what happens. But I am confident that this, this will result in safe, secure voting for people all over the state and that we’ll have more voices and more votes that will be able to be counted after the November election than, than fewer.

Frederica Freyberg:
We might be counting our chickens before they’re hatched because the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on this. But this is the sense of people like yourself and others involved in the case and following it closely that that was what looked like the persuasion out of the oral arguments.

Jay Heck:
Yeah. You never want to predict for sure what the court will do, but one thing we know about the Wisconsin Supreme Court now is that it’s a little easier to predict how they’re going to rule on any given issue than it used to be.

Frederica Freyberg:
So also this week, a near meltdown in the state Senate chambers during override votes on Governor Evers vetoes.

Senator:
The governor did not veto the money…

Chris Kapenga:
Senator, you are out of order. You’re required to sit. You, you shall care. You’re out of order.

Frederica Freyberg:
You shall care. The Senate has the Republican votes to override vetoes, but the Assembly, if close, does not. In your mind Jay given that, why the dramatic effort to override this week?

Jay Heck:
Well, first of all, what a complete and utter waste of the taxpayers, the voters of Wisconsin’s time and resources for the majority in the Republican — Republican majority to come in and decide that they were once again going to try to override vetoes that have previously been sustained and, you know, put put Wisconsin through this exercise. Yes, they had the votes in the state Senate, and yes, they were able to vote to override five, five of the governor’s bills. But they knew that the Assembly didn’t have the votes to do this. So it was just an exercise in political theater. It was designed to message to their base that they’re concerned about issues and they’re conservatives, and they’re going to fight for this stuff. But it did nothing to solve the problems that Wisconsin needs to have addressed. And it’s again, a reason — I call it the last gasp of the hyper-partisan gerrymandered Legislature. Hopefully after the November elections, we’ll have a Legislature that more accurately reflects what Wisconsin really looks like and that would include more bipartisan cooperation and actually working on things Wisconsinites care about than that kind of political theatrics.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Jay Heck, thanks very much.

Jay Heck:
Thanks for having me.