Wausau Mayor Doug Diny will not face criminal charges after he rolled away the city's only absentee ballot drop box in September 2024, a special prosecutor announced Wednesday. The ruling closes the criminal case but leaves an ethics violation on the books and a political fight still simmering. City officials and residents remain split over what the episode says about how elections are run in Wausau.
How the removal unfolded
On Sept. 22, 2024, Diny put on a hard hat and gloves, loaded the locked absentee ballot drop box onto a dolly, and moved it from its spot outside Wausau City Hall into a secured area inside the building, according to FOX6 Milwaukee. He brought the box back about a week later after City Clerk Kaitlyn Bernarde raised concerns.
Bernarde told officials that absentee ballots had already been mailed to voters but the drop box itself had not yet been opened for public use, so there were no ballots inside at the time of the mayor’s late-night moving job, Wausau Pilot & Review reported. The removal still triggered complaints from residents and prompted county and state officials to open an investigation.
Why prosecutors declined charges
Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, serving as a special prosecutor, concluded he could not prove any crime beyond a reasonable doubt because the drop box was sealed, empty and had not yet been put into service for collecting ballots, according to The Associated Press. Without any ballots inside, he said, the core elements of Wisconsin’s election-tampering laws were missing.
Toney also determined that the container did not clearly fit the legal definition of a ballot box used at a polling place and pointed to state election guidance to support that view, the AP reported. A separate review by the Wisconsin Department of Justice likewise found no basis for criminal charges, according to the same outlet.
Ethics board found a violation
The lack of criminal charges does not clear Diny on the ethics front. The Wausau Ethics Board previously found that he violated the city's ethics code when he unilaterally removed the drop box, although the panel stopped short of recommending fines or removal from office, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.
The board concluded that Diny had “exceeded his lawful authority” and ordered him not to interfere with the city clerk’s election duties going forward. That finding keeps the controversy alive even as prosecutors back away from filing criminal charges.
Local reaction and political context
The move set off a local firestorm. Voting-rights advocates and many residents argued that the mayor’s hands-on approach to election equipment undercut public trust in the process, while some conservative community members backed his stated concerns about drop box security, as reported by Wausau Pilot & Review.
Diny had campaigned against the use of drop boxes and ran as a conservative during the April 2024 mayoral race. The incident quickly folded into a broader statewide fight over how easy absentee voting should be in Wisconsin. Adding another political wrinkle, special prosecutor Eric Toney is himself a Republican candidate for state attorney general, a detail noted by FOX6 Milwaukee.
What this means legally
Prosecutors stressed that Wisconsin’s criminal statutes focus on tampering with ballots or breaking into ballot containers, not on simply moving a sealed receptacle that contains no ballots at all - a legal line that ultimately sank the criminal case, according to The Associated Press.
That gap in the law does not wipe away the Ethics Board’s findings or the political fallout, and it leaves the door open for civil or administrative action if officials choose to pursue it. Local election administrators say they will continue to follow Wisconsin Elections Commission guidance on how absentee ballot drop boxes should be secured and where they should be placed.
What’s next
Even with the criminal inquiry officially closed, the saga has already fueled local reviews and statewide proposals - including Republican-backed bills that would restrict or outlaw drop boxes altogether - that could reshape absentee voting rules across Wisconsin, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.
For now, Wausau officials say the city’s secured absentee ballot drop box is back in service and available for voters who prefer not to mail their ballots. The city clerk’s office plans to share any future changes at upcoming council meetings, and residents with questions about absentee voting are being directed to contact the clerk at City Hall.
