By Lily Guiney
Gongwer News Service
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson remains concerned about misinformation about the state’s elections as her agency continues to look into claims by Republican Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini about noncitizen voting, she told reporters recently.
Benson, during a virtual press conference, expressed frustration with Forlini’s willingness to publicly assert that multiple noncitizens had voted in the most recent election in his county without properly verifying the information first.
“Our major concern in these findings is that at least one eligible Michigan voter may now be under criminal investigation for voting,” Benson said on a press call. “In addition, at least two of the people who did not vote have also been verified to be United States citizens; their voter registrations are now in jeopardy of being canceled without notice and (them) having done nothing wrong. I have long said we need to conduct these reviews thoroughly and carefully, and this is why, because these accusations have real consequences for real people.”
Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini said his staff compared a list of individuals who rejected jury summons based on citizenship status to those on the Qualified Voter File. He claimed 15 noncitizens were registered to vote and that three had a history of voting.
Forlini did not immediately return a request for comment.
The department said it would conduct a review of Forlini’s findings to determine whether any of the individuals he identified as having said they were not citizens when approached for jury duty had actually voted in any U.S. elections. Forlini’s assertion that noncitizen voting had occurred was based on those individuals’ claims that they were not citizens when given jury summons checked against voter registration records.
Upon completion, the state’s investigation found that three of the 15 people Forlini identified had any voting history. One of those people was not, in fact, a noncitizen, but a U.S. citizen and eligible voter. Another is an apparent noncitizen, Benson said, and an ineligible voter who last cast a ballot in 2018 before their registration was canceled in 2022. The department is still awaiting additional documents from the federal government to verify the status of the third person, who voted in 2024.
Of the rest of the group, none of the people alleged to be noncitizen voters have participated in any elections in Michigan. Three of the total 15 are U.S. citizens and four are apparent noncitizens. Benson said those four will receive letters asking them to confirm their eligibility to vote, and if they do not respond their registration will be canceled.
Another four of the group had previously canceled voter registration. The remaining four people require further documentation for the department to verify their citizenship status.
The use of jury summons records to identify allegedly fraudulent or ineligible voters isn’t new, Center for Election Innovation and Research Founder David Becker told reporters. He said jury questionnaires are a “really bad source” of matching to voter files not only because names, driver’s license or Social Security numbers often don’t match, but because people are more likely to lie to get out of jury duty than they are to lie under penalty of perjury, a state and federal felony, on a voter registration form.
To conduct the investigation into Forlini’s claims, Benson said the department compared voter files to driver’s records, which contain documentation of legal presence in the U.S. provided during branch visits. That documentation is point-in-time information, meaning a person who is legally in the country when they visit a branch office could lose that legal status down the road, so the department checks the federal government’s SAVE system to verify current status or gained citizenship.
If an individual returns from that verification process as a noncitizen, a notification letter is sent informing them that their eligibility is in question. If there is no response, their registration is terminated.
Benson said it’s not uncommon for eligible U.S. citizens to be erroneously labeled as otherwise on voter rolls, whether by clerical error or because their citizenship status has changed and state records tend to follow behind federal ones. Updating those registrations must be done, she said, but with attention to detail instead of sweeping generalizations – since she’s been in office, Benson said the department has removed over 1.1 million registrations from the state’s Qualified Voter File after legal review.
Compared to the rest of the country, Becker said Michigan stacks up remarkably well in terms of voter rolls that reflect actual eligibility.
“I've worked on voter lists for 20 years now with states across the country, and I can tell you that Michigan is a standard bearer for clean voter lists, by every measure,” Becker said. “There are three major things we look for. One, automatic voter registration. Second, integration of data between voter lists and motor vehicles files. Michigan has a structural advantage there, because the motor vehicles department is under the secretary of state. (Benson’s) office has done a particularly good job of ensuring the integrity and integration of that data between those two agencies. When someone has a life event and they report it to motor vehicles, that gets reported to elections to keep those voter lists up to date. And then finally, (Michigan) along with half the states in the U.S., is a member of the Electronic Registration Information Center, which allows them to compare data with other states and clean up voter lists.”
It’s especially concerning to see the clerk of a populous county who’s also a Republican candidate for secretary of state put forward unvetted claims right now, Benson said, given recent actions by the federal government that suggest the Trump administration may be looking to interfere with state or local operations during the 2026 midterms.
“The clerk told media outlets that he was working with law enforcement on this issue and met with officials from the Trump (Department of Justice) about his findings,” Benson said. “That's the same justice department that is suing Michigan in 23 states at the president's behest in an attempt to force us to turn over private personal information of millions of Michigan residents through full unredacted voter rolls. That same Justice Department will not tell states why they want this private information of Michiganders, they won't tell us what they're going to use it for, or even if they will store it safely.”
Benson noted the letter sent by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to state officials in Minnesota earlier this week, in which Bondi listed turning over the state’s voter rolls as a condition of removing federal authorities from Minneapolis after the shooting death of Alex Pretti last weekend.
“That same Justice Department (that Forlini met with) demanded after its federal agents terrorized, kidnapped and shot civilians in broad daylight, that Minnesotans turn over their voter rolls to, in their words, ‘restore law and order,’” she said. “They are using the power of the federal government to intimidate and threaten states into changing our safe and secure election procedures. Why? To meet the president's personal and political agenda and to silence the voices of millions of eligible American citizens.”
In response to a question about whether those events, coupled with an FBI raid of election facilities in Fulton County, Georgia, at which National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard was present, might signal a larger effort to convince the public of foreign interference in the 2020 election, Benson said it’s a possibility she hasn’t ruled out.
“I am deeply concerned about the use of misinformation around the security of our elections being used as potentially an effort to not just sow seeds of doubt about the security of our elections, but also potentially try to interfere with our elections in the future,” she said. “And this is precisely why state secretaries of state, local clerks and other state officials are so crucial in this moment, because we are the guardrails.”
If the Trump administration and Michigan Republicans are concerned about foreign interference in the state’s elections, she said, they could have preserved policies to safeguard election systems from foreign actors.
“If the federal government was truly focused and concerned about protecting our elections from foreign interference, they would not have defunded and dismantled the very effective federal protections that we built in 2020 and had in place in 2024 and that have since been dismantled under the Trump administration,” Benson said. “We also worked and tried to hire additional individuals in Michigan who had lost their jobs through that dismantling at the federal level, and the funding for that was cut by the state Legislature.”
Gongwer News Service
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson remains concerned about misinformation about the state’s elections as her agency continues to look into claims by Republican Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini about noncitizen voting, she told reporters recently.
Benson, during a virtual press conference, expressed frustration with Forlini’s willingness to publicly assert that multiple noncitizens had voted in the most recent election in his county without properly verifying the information first.
“Our major concern in these findings is that at least one eligible Michigan voter may now be under criminal investigation for voting,” Benson said on a press call. “In addition, at least two of the people who did not vote have also been verified to be United States citizens; their voter registrations are now in jeopardy of being canceled without notice and (them) having done nothing wrong. I have long said we need to conduct these reviews thoroughly and carefully, and this is why, because these accusations have real consequences for real people.”
Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini said his staff compared a list of individuals who rejected jury summons based on citizenship status to those on the Qualified Voter File. He claimed 15 noncitizens were registered to vote and that three had a history of voting.
Forlini did not immediately return a request for comment.
The department said it would conduct a review of Forlini’s findings to determine whether any of the individuals he identified as having said they were not citizens when approached for jury duty had actually voted in any U.S. elections. Forlini’s assertion that noncitizen voting had occurred was based on those individuals’ claims that they were not citizens when given jury summons checked against voter registration records.
Upon completion, the state’s investigation found that three of the 15 people Forlini identified had any voting history. One of those people was not, in fact, a noncitizen, but a U.S. citizen and eligible voter. Another is an apparent noncitizen, Benson said, and an ineligible voter who last cast a ballot in 2018 before their registration was canceled in 2022. The department is still awaiting additional documents from the federal government to verify the status of the third person, who voted in 2024.
Of the rest of the group, none of the people alleged to be noncitizen voters have participated in any elections in Michigan. Three of the total 15 are U.S. citizens and four are apparent noncitizens. Benson said those four will receive letters asking them to confirm their eligibility to vote, and if they do not respond their registration will be canceled.
Another four of the group had previously canceled voter registration. The remaining four people require further documentation for the department to verify their citizenship status.
The use of jury summons records to identify allegedly fraudulent or ineligible voters isn’t new, Center for Election Innovation and Research Founder David Becker told reporters. He said jury questionnaires are a “really bad source” of matching to voter files not only because names, driver’s license or Social Security numbers often don’t match, but because people are more likely to lie to get out of jury duty than they are to lie under penalty of perjury, a state and federal felony, on a voter registration form.
To conduct the investigation into Forlini’s claims, Benson said the department compared voter files to driver’s records, which contain documentation of legal presence in the U.S. provided during branch visits. That documentation is point-in-time information, meaning a person who is legally in the country when they visit a branch office could lose that legal status down the road, so the department checks the federal government’s SAVE system to verify current status or gained citizenship.
If an individual returns from that verification process as a noncitizen, a notification letter is sent informing them that their eligibility is in question. If there is no response, their registration is terminated.
Benson said it’s not uncommon for eligible U.S. citizens to be erroneously labeled as otherwise on voter rolls, whether by clerical error or because their citizenship status has changed and state records tend to follow behind federal ones. Updating those registrations must be done, she said, but with attention to detail instead of sweeping generalizations – since she’s been in office, Benson said the department has removed over 1.1 million registrations from the state’s Qualified Voter File after legal review.
Compared to the rest of the country, Becker said Michigan stacks up remarkably well in terms of voter rolls that reflect actual eligibility.
“I've worked on voter lists for 20 years now with states across the country, and I can tell you that Michigan is a standard bearer for clean voter lists, by every measure,” Becker said. “There are three major things we look for. One, automatic voter registration. Second, integration of data between voter lists and motor vehicles files. Michigan has a structural advantage there, because the motor vehicles department is under the secretary of state. (Benson’s) office has done a particularly good job of ensuring the integrity and integration of that data between those two agencies. When someone has a life event and they report it to motor vehicles, that gets reported to elections to keep those voter lists up to date. And then finally, (Michigan) along with half the states in the U.S., is a member of the Electronic Registration Information Center, which allows them to compare data with other states and clean up voter lists.”
It’s especially concerning to see the clerk of a populous county who’s also a Republican candidate for secretary of state put forward unvetted claims right now, Benson said, given recent actions by the federal government that suggest the Trump administration may be looking to interfere with state or local operations during the 2026 midterms.
“The clerk told media outlets that he was working with law enforcement on this issue and met with officials from the Trump (Department of Justice) about his findings,” Benson said. “That's the same justice department that is suing Michigan in 23 states at the president's behest in an attempt to force us to turn over private personal information of millions of Michigan residents through full unredacted voter rolls. That same Justice Department will not tell states why they want this private information of Michiganders, they won't tell us what they're going to use it for, or even if they will store it safely.”
Benson noted the letter sent by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to state officials in Minnesota earlier this week, in which Bondi listed turning over the state’s voter rolls as a condition of removing federal authorities from Minneapolis after the shooting death of Alex Pretti last weekend.
“That same Justice Department (that Forlini met with) demanded after its federal agents terrorized, kidnapped and shot civilians in broad daylight, that Minnesotans turn over their voter rolls to, in their words, ‘restore law and order,’” she said. “They are using the power of the federal government to intimidate and threaten states into changing our safe and secure election procedures. Why? To meet the president's personal and political agenda and to silence the voices of millions of eligible American citizens.”
In response to a question about whether those events, coupled with an FBI raid of election facilities in Fulton County, Georgia, at which National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard was present, might signal a larger effort to convince the public of foreign interference in the 2020 election, Benson said it’s a possibility she hasn’t ruled out.
“I am deeply concerned about the use of misinformation around the security of our elections being used as potentially an effort to not just sow seeds of doubt about the security of our elections, but also potentially try to interfere with our elections in the future,” she said. “And this is precisely why state secretaries of state, local clerks and other state officials are so crucial in this moment, because we are the guardrails.”
If the Trump administration and Michigan Republicans are concerned about foreign interference in the state’s elections, she said, they could have preserved policies to safeguard election systems from foreign actors.
“If the federal government was truly focused and concerned about protecting our elections from foreign interference, they would not have defunded and dismantled the very effective federal protections that we built in 2020 and had in place in 2024 and that have since been dismantled under the Trump administration,” Benson said. “We also worked and tried to hire additional individuals in Michigan who had lost their jobs through that dismantling at the federal level, and the funding for that was cut by the state Legislature.”
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