The henhouse is for hens only, but if the door is left open, a fox can get inside.
Voting and jury duty in Michigan are for citizens only. But because the door has been left open, non-citizens can get inside the voting booth and the jury box.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson opened the door, and has no plans on shutting it. Not with Benson herself appearing on the 2026 ballot in the governor’s race.
As Michigan Enjoyer has reported, Benson likes to keep a bloated voter roll. According to census data, Michigan has about 8.03 million voting-age adults. According to Secretary of State data, Michigan has 8.28 million registered voters.
This week, Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini gave a clue as to the extent of non-citizen voting. Forlini is running for Secretary of State as a Republican.
After sending out 10,000 jury summons in a four-month span, Sept. 5 to Jan. 9, the Macomb County Clerk heard back from 239 non-citizens, who reported they are not eligible to vote.
Further review showed that 14 of them had been registered to vote, three had voted, and one had voted multiple times, Forlini told Enjoyer.
How many non-citizens have actually served on juries? How many non-citizens have actually voted?
“I have no idea,” Forlini says.
Not one of them would have been caught if they didn’t self-report. All were brought into the jury pool by their driver’s license data. Benson automatically registers Michigan drivers to vote, and famously does not require proof of citizenship at registration.
For a non-citizen to get a driver’s license and not be registered to vote, they need to furnish proof they are not a citizen.
To return to the metaphor: On Jocelyn Benson’s farm, for a fox to be kept out of the henhouse, he’d need to furnish proof that he’s not a hen.
And on Jocelyn Benson’s voter rolls, the potential for fraud is the default, and removing it takes great effort.
Going into the 2024 election, Benson talked about noncitizen voting as if a myth, like the Yeti or the Loch Ness Monster. Then, Haoxiang Gao voted, and his vote counted.
Had Gao not self-reported his illegal vote, it never would have been discovered. This spurred a partial review from Benson’s team that found another 15 illegal votes. That review doesn’t happen without Haoxiang Gao’s self-report.
In January 2025, on the eve of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Gao fled using a second passport to his native China. He left America behind and the charges he faced in Michigan.
For years, Benson has touted a Brennan Center study that found “only” 30 illegal votes out of 24 million in the 2016 election. It’s her defense when she says illegal voting is not a thing.
Then, in a single cycle, Michigan, alone, produced more than half that number.
What’s the true extent of non-citizen voting in Michigan?
As a Benson aide reportedly told Forlini’s team: “I’m not touching that.”
James David Dickson is host of the James Dickson Podcast. Join him in conversation on X at @downi75.
