Fact Check: Gilchrist, Forlini spar over election denialism in SOS debate

Anthony Forlini and Garlin Gilchrist traded accusations of election denialism in a lively debate between the secretary of state nominees
Gilchrist promised to resist federal intervention in elections as the state’s ‘chief privacy officer’
Forlini said his experience running elections in Macomb County meant he would ‘hit the ground running’

Michigan’s major-party candidates for secretary of state faced off in a largely cordial debate at the University of Michigan Thursday evening, even as the two traded jabs over their handling of government while in office.

Garlin Gilchrist, a Democrat, has served as lieutenant governor for the last eight years opposite Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, while Anthony Forlini has been the Republican Macomb County Clerk since 2021.

Forlini stressed his experience running elections as clerk of the state’s third-largest county, while Gilchrist leaned on his background as a software engineer as evidence he knows how to make systems efficient and protect Michiganders’ sensitive data.

Gilchrist said he would be the “chief privacy officer” for the state and resist federal involvement in Michigan elections, while Forlini promised to clean the state’s voter rolls and support local clerks.

The two also got into a spat over Forlini’s assertion that noncitizens were present on Michigan’s voter rolls.

A recently published survey from pollster Steve Mitchell showed Gilchrist leading Forlini in the race by 5 percentage points, 41% to 36%, with 18% still undecided. As downballot contests, offices like secretary of state and attorney general are often heavily influenced by straight-ticket voting and the outcomes of gubernatorial and federal elections.

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Absentee voting is already underway and nearly 300,000 Michiganders have already cast ballots.

The debate at the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy was moderated by Bridge Michigan and Gongwer News Service. It was the candidates’ second after a forum with third-party candidates hosted by the Michigan League of Women Voters last month.

Current Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who is the Democratic nominee for governor, was never mentioned by either candidate.

Read on for fact checks from the debate.

Fact check: Questioning Gilchrist’s clerk race

In his first foray into politics, Gilchrist lost his first race for Detroit city clerk by about 1,400 votes and later sought a recount of absentee ballots in that race.

“I’m the only one up here that is not an election denier,” Forlini said, though he said Gilchrist was “rightfully” upset about the way the election was handled.

The claim is not accurate. Gilchrist never outright denied his loss, but did raise concerns about the way the election was administered. At the time, Gilchrist said there were “questions” about the election “that give us concern about the vote tallies.”

Forlini added that “33 precincts were not adequately secured, where they could not be counted,” and said Gilchrist felt “disenfranchised.”

That is accurate. Those canisters were deemed un-recountable because either the seals were broken or the absentee ballot counts were off — a longstanding issue in Detroit. Gilchrist had called it “disheartening.”

“I strongly believe that Detroit voters need to know that their votes are counted and that they’re counted accurately,” Gilchrist had said, but told Bridge Michigan his goal in seeking a recount was not to overturn the result of the election.

Fact check: Did Forlini question the 2020 election?

Gilchrist defended his response to his 2017 loss by asserting “I never questioned who won the election,” saying it’s “the biggest difference” between his 2017 loss and Forlini’s actions as clerk.

There is no evidence that Forlini has called the results of the 2020 presidential election into question, though for the most part he has avoided speaking definitively about the outcome.

When pressed at the debate about his view of the 2020 results, Forlini said “Joe Biden was certified as president and served four years.”

As clerk, Forlini did arguably entertain unfounded theories of widespread fraud by ordering an independent audit of the county’s 2020 results.

“This isn’t about overturning 2020 or anything along those lines,” Forlini told the Associated Press in 2021, casting the audit as an opportunity to quell skepticism.

The “forensic audit” cost about $16,000 and the state Bureau of Elections had already sampled 1,601 ballots in the county as part of a risk-limiting audit.

“There is no agenda in my head up front, and I think that’s important because some people have agendas,” Forlini told MLive in 2022. “I had no agenda, other than the truth.”

Fact check: Has Forlini hired a Jan. 6 participant?

Yes. In 2022, Forlini hired Genevieve Peters, a right-wing activist who had denied the outcome of the 2020 election and attended the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol.

The hire drew national headlines at the time and condemnation from Benson. Gilchrist cited the hire as an example of “the ultimate election denial” from Forlini.

But Gilchrist’s claim went a little further: He asserted Peters was “the poll worker recruiter and clerk trainer in Macomb County,” and referred to Peters as a “Jan. 6 insurrection leader.”

There’s no evidence that her responsibilities extend to training election administrators, not just poll workers. And calling her a “leader” may be a stretch. While Peters egged on rioters in front of the Capitol, there’s no evidence she played any organizing role. She was never charged with any crime related to her attendance on Jan. 6, nor is there evidence she entered the Capitol once it was breached by rioters.

Forlini defended Peters during the debate.

“I take responsibility for whatever happens. So you can better believe everything we did, the training we did, was good for Democrats and Republicans,” Forlini said.

Fact check: Did Forlini attend a QAnon protest?

In another attack, Gilchrist said Forlini “has been a QAnon conspiracy theorist” for his appearance at a QAnon-linked “march for human trafficking awareness” in 2020.

While Forlini undeniably attended a 2020 march filled with QAnon-tinged rhetoric, he has consistently asserted he is solely opposed to human trafficking and isn’t affiliated with the fringe conspiracy theory.

The march had clear connections to QAnon supporters — he posed next to a banner reading “save the children,” a slogan closely linked to QAnon beliefs — but at the same time QAnon-adjacent events and the relatively generic language it leveraged have often attracted supporters who didn’t buy into the conspiracy.

That was Forlini’s argument, as he claimed ignorance about the QAnon tie-ins.

“I was at a human trafficking event against human trafficking,” he said. “Back in the distance was something with the letter Q — I didn’t know what that meant.”

Fact check: Has Gilchrist’s Senate attendance sunk?

On a question about withstanding political pressure when administering elections — which Forlini did not directly answer — Forlini made one of his few attacks against Gilchrist of the night.

Calling lieutenant governor “an awesome responsibility,” Forlini asserted that “out of 100 days” in 2025, Gilchrist “only showed up six.”

Forlini’s was proportionally accurate, though the numbers were marginally off.

In 2025, the Michigan Senate spent 114 days in session, and, according to a prior analysis by The Detroit News, Gilchrist showed up 6% of the time.

Gilchrist rebutted that he was in the Capitol “for 100% of the tiebreaking votes that I needed to cast” — the lieutenant governor’s only real power as president of the state Senate — and cited other gubernatorial duties around the state as examples of his work ethic.

Still, his attendance in 2025, as he initially ran for governor, was down compared to his predecessors

Fact check: Did Forlini give voter data to feds?

Gilchrist, in his closing statement, attacked Forlini as “someone that has been coordinating with the Trump Justice Department and has handed over Macomb County voter data willingly, that has violated the privacy” of the county’s voters.

The claim is partially accurate, though Forlini said in the debate he did not initially reach out to the federal government and only began working with them after they began investigating his publicized claims that there are scores of noncitizens on his county’s voting rolls.

Since then, “we are working together with the state, with our locals and with the federal government to try to understand these databases and what’s going on,” Forlini said.

State officials, including Benson, have argued his approach may be producing false positives.

It’s unclear, however, how much data was provided to the federal government by the county and if non-public information was included with it.

Benson had successfully fought Justice Department subpoenas demanding full access to the Qualified Voter File in federal court.