Madison clerk says barcodes on absentee ballot envelopes prevent duplicate votes

The mailing of about 2,200 duplicate absentee ballots in Wisconsin’s heavily Democratic capital city of Madison has led a Republican member of Congress to falsely suggest that the clerk was lying about the presence of barcodes on the ballots themselves.

Ballots in Wisconsin do not contain barcodes. Envelopes that absentee ballots are returned in do contain barcodes so the voter can track their ballot to ensure it was received. The barcodes also allow election officials to ensure that the same voter does not cast a ballot in-person on Election Day.

An initial statement on Monday from Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl did not specify that it was the envelopes, not the ballots, that contain the barcodes. The statement posted on the clerk’s website was later updated to specify that the barcodes were on the envelopes, not the ballots.

Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, a strong supporter of Donald Trump whose northern Wisconsin district does not include Madison, posted a picture of an absentee ballot on the social platform X to show there was no barcode.

“My office has proof that there is no barcode on the actual ballots,” Tiffany posted on Wednesday. “Here is a picture of the absentee ballots – NO BARCODE.”

He also called for an investigation.

By Thursday morning, his post had more than 1.6 million views.

Tiffany later took credit for the clerk changing the wording on her initial statement.

“Why do they keep editing their statements and press releases?” Tiffany posted.

Madison city spokesperson Dylan Brogan said Thursday that he altered the wording of the statement for clarity before Tiffany questioned it by “parsing apart sentences.”

“The City routinely updates its website to provide as much clarity as possible,” Brogan said.

He called the mailing of duplicate absentee ballots “a simple mistake that we immediately rectified and it will have no impact on the election.”

“There are safeguards in place,” Brogan said. “The system worked.”

Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, rebuked Tiffany on X.

“I can’t tell if this is just profound lack of knowledge or the intentional farming of outrage,” she posted. “Both, by the way, are bad.”

Democratic U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore also responded to Tiffany’s post by telling him to “knock it off.”

“This is misinformation,” she posted on X. “You and I both have voted with absentee ballots in Wisconsin. You just did in the Aug 13 primary, and in 4 of the last 5 elections. We owe it to the people of Wisconsin to not spread falsehoods about election security.”

The clerk said in her response to Tiffany that 2,215 duplicate ballots were sent before the error was caught on Monday. No duplicate ballots have been returned, Witzel-Behl said. Once a ballot is received and the envelope barcode is scanned, if a second ballot is returned it will not be counted, she said.

“I would simply note that elections are conducted by humans and occasionally human error occurs,” she wrote to Tiffany. “When errors occur, we own up to them, correct them as soon as possible, and are transparent about them — precisely as we have done here.”

The dustup in battleground Wisconsin comes as there is intense scrutiny over how elections are run, particularly in swing states that are likely to decide the winner of the presidential election. Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020. Nearly four years later, conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election and false claims of widespread fraud persist. Trump continues to insist, despite no evidence of widespread fraud, that he won that election as he seeks a return to the White House.

President Joe Biden’s win over Trump in Wisconsin survived two recounts ordered by Trump, including one involving the city of Madison, an independent audit, a review by a Republican law firm and numerous lawsuits.