Ballot Drop Box Battles: States, municipalities seek to ban them as November election nears

Two months out from Election Day and less than two weeks before early voting begins, states and municipalities are fighting over whether to implement ballot drop boxes, amid election integrity and practical concerns.

Ballot drop boxes, a method of voting that became more widespread during the 2020 presidential election as COVID-19 lockdowns continued, are facing a pushback in several municipalities and states ahead of the November election.

Ohio

On Saturday, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) issued a directive to local election officials, stating that only voters can return their own ballots in drop boxes. The directive followed a July federal court decision that partially struck down a state law restricting who can return absentee ballots for disabled voters. The League of Women Voters of Ohio brought the lawsuit against LaRose in December.

“[T]his directive provides that an assistant delivering a ballot for another must sign an attestation that they comply with applicable state and federal law,” the directive states, later adding, “voter-assisted ballots must be returned inside the board office, where the voter assistant will be asked to complete the attestation form.”

Two days before issuing the directive, LaRose sent a letter to GOP legislative leaders, urging them to review the state’s ban on ballot harvesting and consider eliminating ballot drop boxes.

The court ruling “effectively creates an unintended loophole in Ohio’s ballot harvesting law that we must address,” LaRose wrote. “I suspect this is exactly the outcome the [League of Women Voters] intended. Under the guise of assisting the disabled, their legal strategy seeks to make Ohio’s elections less secure and more vulnerable to cheating, especially as it relates to the use of drop boxes.”

Ohio Democrats criticized LaRose’s directive, with U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman, Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval, and Hamilton County Commissioners Alicia Reece and Denise Driehaus issuing a statement that said it would “limit the voices of our citizens by placing undue restrictions on those who vote absentee.”

Jen Miller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, also disagreed with LaRose’s directive, telling ABC13 on Wednesday, “This would mean that lots of voters would have to be available during working hours to get their ballots back for loved ones. It’s an unnecessary hurdle that’s going to make it harder for voters and elections officials.”

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) dismissed the suggestion to ban ballot drop boxes.

“I think we do a very good job in Ohio running elections,” DeWine said. “I think anyone who wants to change what we do has a burden of proof to show there’s a problem with what we do now.”

Wisconsin

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, two Waukesha County municipalities have voted to ban the use of ballot drop boxes in their cities for the upcoming general election.

The city councils of Brookfield and New Berlin chose to not use ballot drop boxes after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in July that the receptacles could be used again. The ruling overturned another decision by the same court in 2022 that found the ballot drop boxes used in the 2020 presidential election were illegal. The earlier decision was overturned after a liberal majority was elected to the state Supreme Court.

In Brookfield, the drop boxes were banned because the city council deemed them unnecessary, with COVID no longer a threat and the availability of extended hours for in-person absentee voting and a drive-up ballot drop off for disabled voters.

The city attorney also said the decision to not have the drop boxes would save city election workers valuable time and resources, since staff would not have to manage “keeping drop box chain-of-custody logs, maintaining camera surveillance, and having employees use additional security measures for the drop box.”

New Berlin also decided that the one ballot drop box used in the city to be unnecessary, as well as inconvenient for staff to repeatedly empty the smaller receptacle.

Pennsylvania

A few Pennsylvania counties are also rejecting the use of ballot drop boxes.

In March, Westmoreland County, Pa., decided that ballot drop boxes would not be used in the November election, which would require voters to drop off mail-in ballots at the election bureau office inside the courthouse or in the mail, according to WPXI 11 News.

The use of ballot drop boxes has declined each year since the 2020 election, according to election officials.

Republican county commissioners said that operating the drop boxes and transporting the ballots to the courthouse is too expensive.

Beaver, Butler, and Fayette counties also said they do not use ballot drop boxes.

Wyoming

In Wyoming, Secretary of State Chuck Gray (R) sent a letter to the state's 23 county clerks in June, stating that he rescinded his predecessor’s directives that allowed for ballot drop boxes in 2020.

"Given the differing interpretations of my predecessors' support for drop boxes, I want to be unequivocally clear: I do not believe drop boxes represent a safe, secure, or statutory basis for absentee voting," Gray wrote. "For this reason, I believe they should not be used in the 2024 Election and beyond."

Gray said that "the plain language" of the Wyoming Election Code states that completed absentee ballots be mailed or delivered to the clerk, but not unattended ballot drop boxes as a means of delivering absentee ballots to the clerk.

However, the County Clerks' Association of Wyoming defended using the ballot drop boxes. "The phrase 'delivered to the clerk' allows for the use of a ballot drop box at the discretion of an individual County Clerk," Malcolm Ervin, president of the County Clerks’ Association, said in a statement in June. "Without judicial interpretation or legislative clarity, we continue to hold our interpretation as the same."