Wisconsin Supreme Court to decide whether mobile voting vans can be used in future elections

MADISON, Wis. -- The Wisconsin Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday in a case brought by Republicans who want to bar the use of mobile voting vans in the presidential battleground state.

Such vans — a single van, actually — were used just once, in Racine in 2022. It allowed voters to cast absentee ballots in the two weeks leading up to the election. Racine, the Democratic National Committee and others say nothing in state law prohibits the use of voting vans.

Whatever the court decides will not affect the November election, as a ruling isn't expected until later and no towns or cities asked to use alternative voting locations for this election before the deadline to do so passed. But the ruling will determine whether mobile voting sites can be used in future elections.

Republicans argue it is against state law to operate mobile voting sites, that their repeated use would increase the chances of voter fraud, and that the one in Racine was used to bolster Democratic turnout.

Wisconsin law prohibits locating any early voting site in a place that gives an advantage to any political party. There are other limitations on early voting sites, including a requirement that they be “as near as practicable” to the clerk’s office.

For the 2022 election, Racine city Clerk Tara McMenamin and the city “had a goal of making voting accessible to as many eligible voters as possible, and the voting locations were as close as practicable to the municipal clerk’s office while achieving that goal and complying with federal law,” the city's attorney argued in filings with the court.

Racine purchased its van with grant money from the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife. Republicans have been critical of the grants, calling the money “Zuckerbucks” that they say was used to tilt turnout in Democratic areas.

Wisconsin voters in April approved a constitutional amendment banning the use of private money to help run elections.

The van was used only to facilitate early in-person voting during the two weeks prior to an election, McMenamin said. She said the vehicle was useful because it was becoming too cumbersome for her staff to set up their equipment in remote polling sites.

It traveled for two weeks across the city, allowing voters to cast in-person absentee ballots in 21 different locations.

Racine County Republican Party Chairman Ken Brown, represented by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, filed a complaint the day after the August 2022 primary with the Wisconsin Elections Commission, arguing that the van was against state law. He argued that it was only sent to Democratic areas in the city in an illegal move to bolster turnout.

McMenamin disputed those accusations, saying that it shows a misunderstanding of the city’s voting wards, which traditionally lean Democratic.

“Whether McMenamin’s intention was to create this turnout advantage for Democrats or not, that is precisely what she did through the sites she selected,” Brown argued in a brief filed with the state Supreme Court.

The elections commission dismissed the complaint four days before the 2022 election, saying there was no probable cause shown to believe the law had been broken. Brown sued.

Brown sued, and in January, a Racine County Circuit Court judge sided with Republicans, ruling that state election laws do not allow for the use of mobile voting sites.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court in June kept that ruling in place pending its consideration of the case, which effectively meant the use of mobile voting sites would not be allowed in the upcoming presidential election. The court also kept in place the same rules that have been in place since 2016 for determining the location of early voting sites. The deadline for selecting those sites for use in the November election was in June.