Barrett: Milwaukee to set up at least 14 absentee ballot drop boxes

The City of Milwaukee is giving voters more of an opportunity to drop their election ballots off early for the November 3rd general election.

Mayor Tom Barrett says its received a grant that allows them to install more than a dozen drop boxes in which absentee ballots can be mailed out from libraries and other locations around the city.

“We’ve put in an order for (at least 14) drop boxes so that people, rather than putting their ballots once they fill them out in the mail, can drop them off at libraries and other places around the City of Milwaukee. These are secure drop boxes,” said the Mayor during a Democratic National Convention news conference Tuesday. “We are doing everything we can to make it convenient for people because of health reasons, because of COVID-19, because it’s the right things to do.”

As of mid-Tuesday morning, the city had not yet announced where the drop boxes would be located.

The announcement comes days after the U.S. Postal Service told states including Wisconsin they could not guarantee that every absentee ballot would arrive at election offices to be counted, and that – according to CNN and VICE – hundreds of large mail processing machines would be removed from metropolitan area post offices.

The action is part of numerous efforts being funded by $2.154 million in grants from the Center for Tech and Civic Life to expand the ways voters can legally vote using absentee ballots and early voting.

The funding will also help increase in-person early voting sites, provide curbside voting, and help increase pay for poll workers to help offset the risk of a shortage similar to the one found in April due to the coronavirus pandemic.