# Anthony Forlini Macomb County Clerk and Register of Deeds, former Michigan state representative, and the **2026 Republican nominee for Secretary of State of Michigan**. He faces Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II (D) on November 3, 2026 for the open seat [[Jocelyn Benson]] is vacating to run for governor. > [!note] Michigan nominates this office by convention, not primary > Michigan parties choose their Attorney General, Secretary of State and Supreme Court nominees at **party conventions**; candidates must first collect signatures from 15% of delegates. The August 4, 2026 statewide primary did not touch this race. Forlini was endorsed at the **March 28, 2026** Republican endorsement convention with **55%** of delegates over Amanda Love and Monica Yatooma, and formally nominated at the pro forma **August 22** nominating convention. In 2026 both parties moved the decisive contest to a spring endorsement convention, which is why the August events produced almost no coverage. ## The record cuts both ways Forlini does not fit a clean denier / non-denier binary, and the vault should resist forcing him into one. **2022 — he commissioned an audit that debunked the fraud claims.** As Macomb County Clerk he hired Alabama-based Pro V&V to forensically audit Macomb's 2020 election hardware and software. The audit **found no fraud and no outside interference**, directly refuting the hacking claims circulating at the time. His own framing: "This is just one step to restore confidence in the election process." He legitimated the premise that an audit was needed, then published a result that contradicted the movement asking for it. **2026 — a noncitizen-voter referral the state found inflated.** In January 2026 Forlini announced he had identified **15 registered voters** who had claimed noncitizenship to get out of jury duty, said at least three had voted, and referred them to the U.S. [[Department of Justice]]. [[Jocelyn Benson]]'s office investigated and found the characterisation overstated: of the three he said had voted, **one was an eligible U.S. citizen**, one was a noncitizen whose registration had already been cancelled in 2022 and who last voted in 2018, and one remained under review. Across all 15, four appeared to be noncitizens and several were properly registered citizens. > [!quote] Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, January 29, 2026 > "This is what happens when you prioritize headlines over facts — real people pay the price." At least one eligible Michigan voter came under criminal investigation having done nothing wrong. **March 2026, accepting the nomination:** "There's a lot of concerns about the elections, a lack of transparency, a lack of believability." > [!important] The pattern this belongs to > The Macomb episode is the same shape as the federal noncitizen-voter claims tracked on [[Voter Suppression]]: a headline number asserted by an official, narrowed sharply under checking, with the assertion doing its work regardless of what survived. Nevada's 15,903 became 185 and then zero; Macomb's 15 became four, with a citizen referred for investigation along the way. **Scale differs by three orders of magnitude; the mechanism is identical.** What makes Forlini analytically interesting is that the same official ran a 2022 audit that came back clean and published it. > [!warning] Unresolved > A 2022 Macomb Daily report headlined "Macomb County clerk's hiring of election denier draws national attention" exists as a citation but could not be read. It would be the sharpest item in this file if it holds up; it is not characterised here. Also unverified: escalating 2026 claims about further noncitizens in Macomb jury pools, which appear only in partisan outlets. ## See Also - [[Jocelyn Benson]] — departing incumbent, whose office found his January 2026 claims inflated - [[2026 Key State Races Hub]] · [[Battleground Election Officials Hub]] - [[Voter Suppression]] — the noncitizen-voter claim pattern this fits - [[Election Denialism]] · [[Department of Justice]] - [[Alexander Kolodin]] · [[Tim Fleming]] · [[Jim Marchant]] — the other 2026 Republican nominees for chief election officer in battleground states