WATERTOWN, Wis. — As absentee voting gets underway in the battleground state of Wisconsin, Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany is sounding the alarm that a clerical error in the state's capital led to more than 2,000 voters in several precincts in the city receiving duplicate ballots.
Madison spokesman Dylan Brogan was quick to point out that the city has been open about the error and cited safeguards to prevent ballots from being scanned twice.
“The city of Madison prides itself on being extremely transparent in the administration of our elections,” Brogan told The Post.
“We immediately reached out to constituents the same day we discovered the clerical error.”
Brogan said the city clerk's office contacted more than 2,000 voters who received duplicate ballots on Monday and told them to discard one of them.
The city said the error was caused by a failed file merge that copied voter files instead of merging them, and updated the number of affected voters to 2,215 on Tuesday.
“Each absentee ballot has a unique bar code and it can only be scanned once. If it's scanned twice, it's invalid,” Brogan said of the safeguards.
Clerk's News The city's website also states that when an absentee ballot is received, a mark will be placed in the poll book to indicate that the person has already voted, another precaution to prevent double voting.
Rep. Tom Tiffany, whose district covers northern Wisconsin and doesn't include Madison, sent a scathing letter to the city clerk on Tuesday, demanding an explanation for the error.
Several of Tiffany's questions sought clarification on how both the discovery of the error and the handling of duplicate votes were handled. The city initially said the error was limited to one ward, but later acknowledged the problem spread to 10 wards. Tiffany's questions included:
- Has the Clerk's Office received any reports of duplicate votes in other precincts or has any due diligence been done to ensure this “error” is limited to a single precinct?
- Have any of these duplicate ballots been returned to the Clerk's Office, and if so, have they been kept until the investigation is complete?
- The Clerk's Office claims that duplicate ballots have unique bar codes. Are these unique ballot bar codes linked to individual identifiable voter profiles?
Brogan told The Washington Post he hadn't seen Tiffany's letter but said he expected the city to respond.
Tiffany's office confirmed the lawmaker had called for an independent investigation into the error after it emerged several constituencies had been included rather than just one.
In the 2020 presidential election, a mistake in reporting absentee ballots in Milwaukee on election night led to allegations of election fraud in the city. Donald Trump unsuccessfully challenged the results of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin, including a recount in Dane and Milwaukee counties.
Both State Legislature Audit and Private audit The audits by the nonprofit conservative legal groups found no widespread voter fraud in Wisconsin's 2020 election. Both audits cited irregularities and noncompliance with election laws and procedures in several instances.
Madison is in Dane County, where high voter turnout helped tilt the state Democratic in the 2020 presidential election. In the August primary, the state also defeated two Republican-backed constitutional amendments that would have curbed Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' spending power over federal funds, such as pandemic relief funds, by requiring legislative oversight.
President Biden won Dane County in 2020 with 75% of the vote compared to President Trump's 22.8%.
Absentee voting began in Wisconsin last week, but early voting begins on October 22, 14 days before the election.
