The Mayor Wants You To Think Your Vote Isn’t Secure
On Sunday, Mayor Doug Diny removed the absentee ballot dropbox that the City Clerk had ordered to be publicly accessible outside of City Hall.
Diny’s unilateral action deserves condemnation in the strongest possible terms. The authority to make this kind of decision lies firmly with the Clerk – not the Mayor. Diny clearly overstepped the bounds of his office in taking this brazen action.
But it’s not just that. Diny justified himself by claiming the ballots that would be submitted to the dropbox wouldn’t be secure. This is a line from the same, tired playbook that extremists have been pulling from since 2020 to sow doubt into the security of our elections. But just because people like Diny have been saying the same thing for years doesn’t mean that it’s true. Furthermore, the box was locked.
In fact, Diny is flat out wrong. Our elections are secure, and so is voting via dropbox. If you don’t believe me, ask the court system: judges threw out more than 50 cases brought by the Trump campaign claiming fraud in the 2020 election, which included many allegations about dropboxes.
Stunts like this are designed to sow doubt into the security of our elections. There are politicians who count on depressed turnout in important elections to win. Part of how they seek to do this is by trying to convince people that their votes don’t matter.
Don’t let them. Your vote does matter, especially this election. The presidential race will come down to this state, and Wausau is home to one of the most competitive state legislative races in Wisconsin. The votes of you and your network of family and friends could very well decide these elections. So please make a plan to vote.