MADISON — After casting his ballot in person on Tuesday near Madison, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde railed against the use of ballot drop boxes and called for conservatives to monitor them for voter fraud.
Tuesday’s statewide primary was the first election in which ballot drop boxes were once again legal, after a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision issued last month.
“Why do we need drop boxes?” Hovde said. “We never had them in our election process until we had a pandemic. We don’t have a pandemic today. It’s very easy to walk into any voting spot, where it’s monitored, and vote.”
Conservatives’ concerns over drop boxes stem from former President Donald Trump’s false claims that they were used by Democrats in 2020 to commit voter fraud as part of a plot to steal the presidential election.
Hovde, a multimillionaire businessman challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, was endorsed by Trump earlier this year.
There is no evidence that ballot drop boxes led to voter fraud, but the debunked theory has gained attention on the right, in part due to the film “2000 Mules,” which falsely claimed there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Watch: Republican Senate hopeful Hovde calls for ballot drop box monitoring
In Arizona in 2022, a group of dropbox observers armed with guns were accused of intimidating voters. A federal judge ordered them to remain at least 250 feet away from drop boxes.
In Wisconsin, people can watch drop boxes but they cannot interfere with the voting process or intimidate voters. It’s also up to each municipality to decide whether they want to use drop boxes. The Wisconsin Elections Commission recommends that election officials who use drop boxes monitor them with security cameras.
“I hope people are watching drop boxes because it just – you know, we’ve gotta get back to creating confidence in our election process,” Hovde said outside his polling site at the Shorewood Hills Village Hall.
Ike Cech, a Democratic voter who cast his ballot a few miles away in downtown Madison on Tuesday, said he believes drop boxes are already secure enough.
“I don’t think they need to be monitored, you know?” he said. “We’ve got voter rolls, we’ve got so many systems in place to check that people are voting accurately and fairly that I don’t think they need to be monitored."
