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A preliminary state investigation into potential noncitizen voters in Macomb County, Michigan, found one noncitizen who had cast a ballot in the county in 2018, but also found that several people whom the county flagged were actually U.S. citizens.
Anthony Forlini, the Macomb County clerk and a Republican candidate for secretary of state, said two weeks ago that he had found 15 people on Macomb County’s list of roughly 725,000 registered voters who had recused themselves from jury duty on the grounds that they were not U.S. citizens. Officials from his office said that at least three of those people had voted before, which Forlini described as evidence of broader problems with the state’s voter roll maintenance.
After her department investigated the claim, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Thursday that, of the three people Forlini’s office had flagged, one was a noncitizen, one was a citizen (and thus an eligible voter), and one was still under review but had last voted in 2024. The noncitizen last voted in 2018, and their registration was canceled in 2022.
Benson said during a press conference Thursday that while it is her department’s policy to refer noncitizen voters to the attorney general’s office, the 2018 case was “so long ago” that her office is reviewing the statute of limitations before deciding whether to pursue legal action.
Four of the remaining 12 voters Forlini flagged do appear to be noncitizens, according to Angela Benander, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State. The state will request additional information from them before canceling their registrations. Two more are U.S. citizens who are properly registered, three had already been removed from the rolls, and the remaining three are still being investigated by the state, Benander told Votebeat on Thursday.
“When we review our voter lists, it is not uncommon to find eligible American voters improperly labeled as noncitizens, whether by clerical error, change of citizenship status or otherwise,” Benson said Thursday. “We update our lists accordingly, so that eligible citizens aren’t wrongfully investigated, removed from voter rolls or stopped from voting.”
Comparing voter rolls to databases containing citizenship data like those produced by jury service can be an unreliable way to find noncitizen voters. Other states have tried it and ultimately came up with inflated numbers of potential noncitizens.
David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, joined Benson on Thursday. He said that “jury questionnaires are a really bad source of matching to voter files for a variety of reasons.”
He said those matches tend to produce false positives because those called for jury duty often lie about their citizenship status “to get out of jury duty, rather than having lied under penalty of perjury on a voter registration form.”
Benson criticized what she called “reckless accusations” that “can lead to the disenfranchisement of eligible voters.”
She also criticized President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, which Forlini told media he had been in conversations with, for trying to force states to turn over voter rolls. Michigan, along with several other states, has been the target of one of those requests. The state turned over only the public file, with no personal identifying information, and is now facing a lawsuit over that decision.
Forlini did not immediately respond to Votebeat’s requests for comment.
Voting by noncitizens is extremely rare. Michigan’s review of the entire qualified voter file conducted last year found that of the more than 5.7 million ballots cast in the 2024 general election, only 16 people were potentially noncitizens. Similar reviews in other states have produced comparable numbers: A review in Georgia, for instance, found only 20 potential noncitizens in its own voter rolls of 8.2 million people.
In Michigan, Republicans in particular have said that any instance of noncitizen voting is unacceptable and pushed for a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement in the state, rather than just an attestation from registrants that they are citizens. Democrats, meanwhile, including Benson, have insisted that such requirements would be too burdensome and would disproportionately prevent eligible citizens from voting.
Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.
