Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) has demanded an investigation after the city of Madison, Wisconsin, mistakingly sent out 2,215 duplicate absentee ballots across 10 city wards.
On Tuesday, the Republican representative released a statement on X, formerly twitter, saying, “The City of Madison clerk said the duplicate absentee ballots were sent to one ward yesterday. Now, they say it’s 10. There needs to be an independent investigation now, not after the election.”
Tiffany sent a letter on Tuesday to Maribeth Witzel-Behl, the city clerk, demanding that the city provide “transparency” regarding the reports that 2,215 duplicate absentee ballots were distributed to 10 city wards. The Wisconsin representative emphasized that transparency was needed in light of “the history of controversial and legally dubious election practices carried out by Madison officials in the past.”
Tiffany told the city clerk, “Voters deserve clear answers regarding the full scope of this blunder, how the city plans to restore public confidence in its ability to accurately administer the election, and assurances that those responsible are held accountable.”
In a statement to Fox News, Tiffany emphasized that the duplicate absentee ballot issue “can’t just be swept under the rug.” He added, “The people responsible for this need to be held accountable.”
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KWOW reported that Deputy Clerk of the City of Madison Jim Verbick described the ballot issue as a “human error.”
The clerk’s office explained that the duplicate ballots have identical bar codes that the system would not allow to be processed twice. The clerk’s office added that when a voter’s ballot is scanned, the voter is shown to have submitted an absentee ballot in the city’s poll book, which would prevent the voter from submitting another ballot.
Dylan Brogan, a city spokesperson, told Fox News that once the ballot mistake was made, the clerk’s office “moved swiftly to rectify the error and reassure voters.” Despite the ballot issue, Brogan claimed there was “NO possibility of a duplicate absentee ballot being counted.”
City officials also claimed that the ballot mistake was caused by the merging of two identical files that created a list of duplicate names and addresses.
“About 3,000 voters all use the same ballot style, and we had to separate it into two different files to cover that range based on the limitation of the files that we can pull out of the registration system,” Verbick stated. “We tried to combine the two, and instead, one of them got copied instead of combined.”
