Four parties have intervened in a lawsuit seeking to end the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in Wisconsin

Four parties have intervened in a lawsuit that was brought by two Waukesha County voters who asked a judge to block the use of absentee ballot drop boxes in Wisconsin.

The lawsuit was filed in June in Waukesha County by Richard Teigen of Hartland and Richard Thom of Menomonee Falls with the help of the conservative legal group Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.

Since the lawsuit was filed, four parties have attempted to intervene in the case: Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, Disability Rights Wisconsin, Faith Voices for Justice and League of Women Voters of Wisconsin.

On Oct. 12, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren granted the request from the four groups.

Teigen and Thom filed their suit three days after the state Supreme Court declined to take a separate case that challenged the legality of ballot drop boxes. Drop boxes were widely used in Wisconsin last year in response to the pandemic.

More:Wisconsin Senate votes to limit ballot drop boxes and require paperwork for absentee ballots

More:A conservative legal group has filed a complaint over Hartland's use of absentee ballot drop boxes

The suit asks Bohren to invalidate advice to clerks from the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission about how absentee ballots can be returned, including through the use of drop boxes. But according to the lawsuit, voters can return absentee ballots in only two ways: dropping them off in person at municipal clerks' offices or returning them through the mail.

"A drop box is not the 'municipal clerk.' It is an unsupervised, inanimate object. Allowing ballots to be cast by placing them into an unsupervised, inanimate object invites the fraud and abuse that the Legislature was attempting to prevent" by limiting how ballots could be returned, attorney Rick Esenberg wrote in the lawsuit.

Intervening groups

The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee said it has a significant interest in the suit because it wants to "help ensure that voters are not impeded by this cynical effort when they attempt to vote in the 2022 U.S. Senate election."

"This case involves nothing less than a request to erect a potentially serious obstacle to Wisconsin voters being able to successfully exercise their right to vote absentee," the DSCC stated in court documents.

The DSCC said 2020 had the highest voting turnout for Wisconsin in 70 years, with nearly 76% of eligible voters participating.

"That turnout was facilitated by the widespread availability of carefully regulated secure drop boxes," the DSCC noted.

The group also said there was no evidence secure drop boxes facilitated voter fraud.

According to court documents, the three other groups also said they are affected by the lawsuit because the groups "promote voter awareness, education and participation" to the public.

"This case threatens to burden, if not deny, access to voting for disabled or otherwise disadvantaged Wisconsin citizens whose interests (the groups) represent and serve," Disability Rights Wisconsin, Faith Voices for Justice and League of Women Voters of Wisconsin stated in court documents.

A motion hearing for the case is scheduled for Dec. 16.

Contact Evan Frank at (262) 361-9138 or evan.frank@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Evanfrank_LCP.