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Some Milwaukee Republicans are attempting Tuesday to vote in their party's primary races while also writing in the name of Democratic Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr., elections officials said.

"There are cases where it's happened," Milwaukee Election Commission director Neil Albrecht said.

Under Wisconsin law, a voter can choose to participate in either the Democratic or Republican primaries, but can't do both on the same ballot.

Clarke, a conservative Democrat, is running in that party's sheriff primary against challenger and Milwaukee Police Lt. Chris Moews, who holds views more typically associated with Democrats and liberals. Clarke is running for sheriff for the fourth time.

There is no GOP candidate for sheriff in Milwaukee County.

Albrecht said after consulting with state election officials, he is having election workers count the other GOP races voted on by those Republicans but not the write-in portions casting a vote for Clarke as a Republican for sheriff.

Reid Magney, a spokesman for the state Government Accountability Board, said that was the correct approach because under state law write-in votes can't be used to get around the prohibition against voting in both partisan primaries at once. Magney said that a similar situation involving GOP voters and Democratic sheriff candidates had also come up Tuesday in Richland and Dunn counties and is being handled in the same manner.

"The Republican primary votes that were cast will count but the write-in votes will not," Magney said.

Brandon Savage of the Moews campaign said that was the first he had heard of the issue. Clarke campaign spokesman Chris Haworth did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

With the competitive sheriff's race in Milwaukee County and other active races such as two Assembly seats, overall turnout in the city of Milwaukee could hit 20% to 25%, higher than that predicted for the rest of the state, Albrecht said.

Magney said GAB director Kevin Kennedy was traveling in the 6th Congressional District Tuesday and believed that turnout there, with its competitive GOP primary, would hit the 15% level that he had predicted as the statewide figure.

Georgia Pabst of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.