WATERTOWN, Wisconsin — As absentee voting gets into full swing in battleground Wisconsin, GOP Rep. Tom Tiffany is raising concerns about what the state capital says is a clerical error that resulted in more than 2,000 voters in several city wards receiving duplicate ballots.
Dylan Brogan, Madison’s communications director, was quick to say the city had been open about the mistake and cited security measures in place to prevent ballots from being scanned twice.
“The city of Madison really prides itself on being extremely transparent in its election administration,” Brogan told the Post.
“The day we learned there was a clerical error, we immediately contacted voters.”
Brogan said the city clerk’s office contacted more than 2,000 voters who received duplicate ballots in a single day and notified them to destroy one of the ballots.
The city says the error was caused by a failed file merge in which voter files were copied rather than merged, and on Tuesday put the number of affected voters at 2,215.
“Each absentee ballot has unique barcodes and they can only be scanned once. If it's scanned twice, it's rejected,” Brogan said of the security measure.
clerk's Information The city’s website also states that when an absentee ballot is received, it is marked in the poll book to indicate that the person has already voted, as another safeguard against a second vote.
Rep. Tom Tiffany, whose northern Wisconsin district does not include Madison, sent a strongly worded letter to the city clerk on Tuesday, demanding answers for the errors.
Many of Tiffany's questions sought clarification on how the error was discovered and how duplicate ballots were handled. The city initially said the error was limited to just one ward, but it later acknowledged the problem spanned 10 wards. Tiffany's questions included:
- Did the Clerk's Office receive any reports of duplicate ballots in other wards, or was any proper investigation conducted to ensure that this “error” was limited to only one ward?
- Have any of these duplicate ballots been returned to the clerk’s office, and if so, have they been set aside pending an investigation?
- The Clerk's Office has claimed that the duplicate ballots have unique bar codes. Are these unique ballot bar codes linked to individual, identifiable voter profiles?
Brogan had not seen Tiffany’s letter when he spoke to the Post, but said the city would respond.
Tiffany's office confirmed that the congressman has called for an independent investigation into the error after it was learned that it involved multiple wards instead of just one.
In the 2020 presidential election, Absentee ballot error Reporting 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 one State Legislative Audit and one more Private audit A survey conducted by a nonprofit conservative legal group found no widespread election fraud in Wisconsin's 2020 election. Both audits cited irregularities and non-compliance with election laws or procedures in some cases.
Madison is in Dane County, where high turnout helped turn the state blue in the 2020 presidential election and recently In primary school in August this year, That's when voters defeated two Republican-backed constitutional amendments on the ballot attempting to rein in Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' spending authority over federal funds such as pandemic relief funds by requiring legislative oversight.
President Biden won Dane County in 2020 with 75% of the vote, while Trump received 22.8%.
Absentee voting in Wisconsin began last week, but in-person voting will begin Oct. 22, 14 days before the election.
