for Wisconsin.

I'm so excited.

>> All right, Brian Schimming, thanks very much.

>> 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.

>> Teigen, the principle of it, or Teigen is that somehow, if something is not explicitly st ated in the statute, that it can't be done, isn't that that pr inciple?

That's the principle that turns everything else on it s head in Teigen.

>> What if we just got it wrong?

Wh at if we made a mistake?

Are we now supposed to just pe rpetuate that mistake into the future?

cause Wisconsin argued for their use.

Its executive director, Jay Heck, joins us now.

And Jay, nice to see you.

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

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, 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, Wisconsin is now the only state in the upper Midwest, only non-red deep red state that doesn't allow the use of them.

>> 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?

>> 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.

And 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.

>> 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.

>> Well, it will be, although you know, it early or 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 to be that will be able to be counted after the November election than than fewer.

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 that was what looked like the persuasion out of the oral arguments.

>> 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.

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

>> So Gaber not veto the senator.

>> You are out of order.

You're required to sit.

You.

You shall care.

You're out of order.

>> You shall care.

The Senate has the Republican votes to override vetoes, but the Assembly, if close, does not in your mind, J given that, why the dramatic effort to override this week?

>> 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 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 partizan gerrymandered legislature, where hopefully after the November elections, we'll have a legislature that more 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 that kind of political