Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini, a GOP contender for the Michigan Secretary of State position, just tossed a political grenade into Michigan’s election bureaucracy. While digging through jury duty lists, he found 239 people in the state’s jury pool over a four- month period who are not U.S. citizens.
Yesterday in Macomb County we uncovered more problems with procedure and how elections are run. This is vary alarming and hints at a larger issue statewide.
When I am Secretary of State, we will pay attention to these details, tightening our system so elections and processes… pic.twitter.com/lg624PAWWi [1]
— Anthony G. Forlini (@tonyforlini1) January 13, 2026 [2]
Jury pools are generated from the driver’s license database through the Michigan Secretary of State’s office. That would be Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson who is running for governor and has been sued on many fronts – for failing to comply with a subpoena related to election materials, for refusing to provide unredacted voter rolls, and for racial discrimination [3] in her office.
14 of the non-citizens in Macomb County were also found to be registered to vote, 10 of whom are still qualified to do so. Monika Rittner, supervisor of records for the Circuit Court, added that three of them had voted in the past and one voted several times.
Cheri Hardmon, spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office told the Detroit Free Press that only U.S. citizens who are Michigan residents, are 18 years old by Election Day and are not currently serving a sentence in jail or prison can vote in Michigan elections. APPARENTLY NOT.
The non-citizens self reported themselves as non-citizens when asked to be dismissed from being on a jury. Otherwise, no one would be the wiser.
Forlini said in a statement, “The Secretary of State’s office under Jocelyn Benson should have caught this years ago. This reeks of malfeasance and mis-management.”
Amazingly, Michigan relies on self-reported citizenship during the drivers license and voting process and according to authorities, the state doesn’t use a systematic federal verification. Because the secretary of state’s office is being run by a Democrat, this is most likely a purposeful “oversight” IMHO.
Michigan’s election system isn’t corrupted and failing because of some elaborate foreign plot – it’s failing because it runs on the honor system and crossed fingers – and as little as possible election integrity laws because of the Democratic Party and Benson.
If non-citizens can end up on jury rolls and voter rolls simply by checking a box – and only get “caught” when they volunteer the truth – then the problem isn’t hypothetical, it’s structural. Whether you call it incompetence or negligence, a system that “trusts but doesn’t verify” isn’t safeguarding democracy. It’s just hoping no one notices.
So when Benson tells voters she wants to be governor because she “protects democracy,” keep this in mind: the system she already runs can’t reliably tell who is legally allowed to vote. That’s not a résumé builder – it’s a credibility problem, and one Michigan voters may want to remember before promoting her to a bigger job.