Tulare's duplicate ballots are real. They don't show cheating.

The count is 7,791 voters, all in the city of Tulare, county officials said. That is about 23% of the city's voters, a bit more than the post says, and about 3% of the county's.

County officials reported 7,791 duplicates among more than 227,000 registered voters countywide, all sent to the city¹. The city has just over 34,500 registered voters, and the LA Times puts the share at about 23% in the city and 3% in the county².

The registrar's first statement paired the 7,791 with "0.03%"³, and a local report ran that as the share of city voters⁴. That would be about 10 people. The 7,791 is about 3.4% of the county, by our calculation, so the figure looks like a misplaced decimal.

The "House battleground" part needs one trim. Only portions of the city are in the 22nd District, where Rep. David Valadao and Randy Villegas are in a close race².

The postcard is real, but it isn't what stops a second vote. The county says each return envelope's barcode is tied to the voter's record and checked before a ballot is accepted for counting.

Staff scan the barcode, record the return, compare the signature and check whether the person has already voted, registrar Michelle Baldwin told the Times. A second ballot "will be flagged"². When Green Bay sent duplicates to 152 voters this year, one returned two, and both were voided after officials alerted the voter⁵.

Tammy Patrick of the National Association of Election Officials told Snopes that no one gets to vote twice in a jurisdiction because they got two ballots: "That does not happen." She also said it's up to officials "to make sure that the security protocols are there and are followed"⁶. Votebeat says duplicates "hardly ever" lead to double voting⁵. In Tulare, officials learned of the error from voters' calls², and a Fresno State professor said returning two ballots would be "a mess" for counting¹.

When Fresno County reissues a ballot, its registrar says only the most recent counts and earlier ones are void⁷. Tulare's postcard says either packet can be used, and the registrar says extras are "automatically" rejected³.

The evidence points to a printing error, which the registrar says the vendor has accepted. No official or report we found says a second ballot has been counted so far.

Baldwin says the county's longtime printer, ProVote Solutions, "has accepted full responsibility," and that it confirmed a batch of nearly 7,800 was accidentally reprinted and mailed. The company didn't immediately respond to the Times². Valadao's campaign said it has "a lot of faith" in the registrar. Villegas said he has "confidence" in the process².

Another post with 78K views said "it's Democrats cheating again"⁸. The Times describes the city as Republican-leaning and says the county voted for Trump three times². Gunther Eagleman's post asked the county to name the vendor and show how duplicates get flagged⁹, and those are fair questions. The Times has since reported the vendor's name and Baldwin's account of the check².

Snopes found no documented case of extra ballots producing multiple votes at a scale that could skew a result⁶. One study put double voting at about one in 4,000 voters in 2012, and an audit suggested less¹⁰. It tracked people recorded as voting on two registrations. Duplicate mailings are a different thing.

Mailing everyone may make such errors bigger, since more packets go out. But states where voters must ask for mail ballots had duplicates too, and no data we found compares rates.

California mails ballots to all active voters¹¹, one of eight states set up for all-mail elections¹². Illinois, Georgia, Iowa, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania aren't on that list, and voters there apply, though Illinois has an opt-in permanent list and Pennsylvania an annual one^{13,14,15,16,17}.

Those states had duplicates too. Kane County, Ill.: 2,000 of 43,000 mailed, about 4.7% by our calculation¹⁸. Athens-Clarke County, Ga.: 1,154¹⁹. Warren County, Iowa: 613¹⁵. Madison, Wis.: 2,215 in 2024²⁰. Westmoreland County, Pa.: 157²¹. Snopes counted at least 10 reports in eight states this cycle, including Utah⁶.

The post has a point on scale. Tulare's was the largest accidental double mailing we found this fall. Maryland's primary was bigger and different: a vendor error led that request state to reissue ballots to everyone who had requested one, more than 500,000 people^5,22. Fresno County says at least 15,000 voters got a second ballot, which its registrar ties to legally required reissues⁷. Neither the Bipartisan Policy Center's 2026 report nor the federal 2024 survey report counts duplicates mailed^23,24.