Tom Tiffany Is a Leading Election Denier

Tom Tiffany. (Public Domain).

In November 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won the election for U.S. President by more than 7 million votes, a margin of 4.5%. His margin of victory was more than three times larger than for Donald Trump in 2024, which Trump has called a “massive mandate.”

Yet Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany supported efforts to overturn the 2020 election of Biden, the obvious choice of the American electorate.

Tiffany and Wisconsin Republican Rep. Scott Fitzgerald were the state’s only lawmakers voting to overturn Biden’s presidential victory in the key swing states of Arizona and Pennsylvania. Wisconsin Republican U.S. House members Glenn Grothman, Bryan Steil and Mike Gallagher all voted to reject the objections and affirm Biden’s election. Even GOP Senator Ron Johnson, an election conspiracy theorist himself, switched his vote to support the Arizona election.

Grothman, a friend of Tiffany and one of the most conservative House members, condemned the attempt to overturn the election. “I am sure that James Madison and Alexander Hamilton are spinning in their graves. The idea that the President would be determined by a vote of Congress is both absurd and dangerous,” he said.

Gallagher was equally alarmed, writing a column for the conservative National Review noting that “not a single legislative chamber, including those controlled by Republicans… has been willing to override the will of its voters…The idea that Congress — not the people in the states — gets to choose the president and the vice president would surprise the Framers. It would stun millions of Americans.”

But Tiffany did far more than this to overturn the election. He falsely claimed that “unscrupulous” officials in Dane County and Milwaukee County allowed “hundreds of thousands of illegal votes to be cast and counted” and accused the Wisconsin Supreme Court of failing to uphold the law for not overturning the election. He also said he would have voted to overturn the election in Wisconsin had Congress chose to vote on this.

Tiffany also was the only member of the Wisconsin delegation to join 120 Republicans in signing onto a lawsuit filed by the Republican attorney general of Texas with the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge the 2020 election. The lawsuit, supported by President Trump, sought to sue Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan, making unsupported allegations of fraud and election irregularities. It was rejected by the court.

Tiffany supported this suit despite a finding by the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and Trump’s own election czar Christopher Krebs, which released a statement that the 2020 election “was the most secure in American history.” The conclusion was echoed by Trump’s Attorney General William Barr, who declared that federal investigators had seen no widespread fraud that could have affected the election’s result.

Even before the election’s result was determined, Tiffany was tweeting about alleged irregularities and fraud, the Wisconsin Examiner reported, ultimately pushing with idea with some six tweets, even as dozens of state and federal courts found no evidence of fraud.

Gallagher accused those objecting to Biden’s victory of encouraging Trump supporters to think the results could be overturned, culminating in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. But “Tiffany did not accept any responsibility for his role in spreading the lie that brought hundreds to D.C.,” the Examiner noted. “In an email newsletter sent Jan. 8, he continued to claim there were ‘irregularities’ in the election. On Jan. 9, he appeared at a closed-door rally in Wausau where he said he didn’t believe Trump had any role in inciting the insurrection and stood by as a right wing radio host called for ‘war.’”

A recount in Wisconsin did not change the results of the election and a 168-page report by nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau and 10-month investigation by the conservative Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty both found no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Yet Tiffany has never disclaimed any of his false accusations about the 2020 election, nor did he respond to Urban Milwaukee asking for his evidence that Milwaukee and Dane County officials had unscrupulously allowed hundreds of thousands of illegal votes.

The conservative news website RightWisconsin published a piece after Tiffany supported the Texas lawsuit apologizing for endorsing his candidacy for U.S. Congress earlier that year (which was republished by Urban Milwaukee).

A January 2024 report by the Congressional Integrity Project named Tiffany as one of the key “election deniers and insurrection apologists” in Congress whose claims helped cause the attack on the U.S. Capitol and who were now seeking to impeach Biden.

And last week the Journal Sentinel reported that Tiffany recently attended an event featuring Michael Flynn, a Trump loyalist who promoted 2020 election conspiracy theories.

Tiffany did not offer any comment to the paper to explain or defend himself. After all, he has had a consistent record of promoting election lies. That may not hurt him with MAGA Republicans as he runs for governor, but it will be an enduring stain on him among other voters.