The Macomb County clerk/register of deeds said his office found 239 noncitizens in the county Circuit Court jury pool during a recent four-month period — including 14 who were registered to vote at some point — and that more should be done to confirm citizenship in the system based on self-reporting.
Only U.S. citizens are eligible for jury duty and to vote in elections.
Clerk/Register of Deeds Anthony Forlini said that from Sept. 5 through Jan. 8, his staff found that 239 people in the jury pool who self-reported that they were not U.S. citizens. He said those people received a jury summons and that’s when they reported that they could not serve because they are not a citizen.
The jury pool is generated from the Michigan Secretary of State’s driver’s license database and those with state IDs. Individuals who are legally present in the U.S. can get driver’s licenses or state IDs in Michigan.
In a cross-check with the state’s Qualified Voter File, 14 of the noncitizens were registered to vote at some point, 10 of whom are still qualified to vote, said Monika Rittner, supervisor of records for the Circuit Court, during a news conference Monday, Jan. 12, in the jury room at the Circuit Court in Mount Clemens.
Three showed a voter history. One voted several times and has since been removed, Rittner said.
Forlini said all of the cases of those who voted will be forwarded to the proper authorities, with information already sent to the county corporation counsel’s office. Forlini announced in September that he is running for the Republican nomination for Michigan secretary of state this year.
Rep. Joseph Aragona, a Republican whose district represents the northern part of Clinton Township and the majority of Macomb Township and who attended the press conference, said “obviously this is a serious issue we need to look into” and one that should go before the oversight committee in Lansing.
Cheri Hardmon, spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office, said in an email that the office “regularly investigates reports of voting fraud and will make referrals to law enforcement for further investigation if merited.”
“If the clerk has concerns about data he is viewing in QVF (Qualified Voter File), we invite him to reach out to the Bureau of Elections so we can investigate,” Hardmon wrote.
Hardmon said 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.
Rittner said she called the Secretary of State’s Office to verify procedure to remove the people who they identified in the voter roll and was told this would need to go through local clerks.
Forlini said the issue came to their attention when supervisors in his office were discussing the various problems they had with low juror turnout, saying that about 40% who are sent notices for jury duty are qualified and show up.
Forlini said when staff realized that more than 200 people requested to be dismissed from the county’s jury pool during the last four months because of non-citizenship, “the thought occurred to me, how this is possible that noncitizens were even given the opportunity to be in a jury pool.”
“This has caused our office to have an unreasonable amount of bureaucratic time to process and remove people from jury duty that never should have been on the list to begin with,” he said.
Forlini said “this is kind of unique what we came across here between the (Qualified Voter File) and the jury pool data. This really was enlightening to see how that works and to see how many people actually turned out to be on our voter rolls.”
Rittner said county elections staff looked up the files “just as we had recently done where we had removed 300 deceased voters over the age of a hundred. So we had just gone through a similar process.”
Forlini said the only way noncitizens have to get out of jury service is if “they tell us through self-reporting process, otherwise, we would have no idea that they are not citizens.” He said he wondered how many noncitizens, in the past, were too afraid to report or didn’t know better and have served on a jury, adding “this could compromise the entire judicial system.”
Forlini did not know of any noncitizens who served on a jury, but said officials wouldn’t know because it’s self-reporting, adding: “that’s the problem.”
He said the county updated its jury software system, with officials able to go back as far as September, but “we are monitoring it as we go forward.” He said there is a database for nonpermanent disqualification, saying these people could become a citizen at some point and they then could serve on a jury and could vote.
Oakland County Clerk/Register of Deeds Lisa Brown said this has not been a problem in Oakland County.
She said Oakland County’s jury questionnaire has a question of whether or not the person filling it out is a citizen. If they are not, Brown said, they are excused and removed from the jury pool.
Brown said she had no number on how many people have checked that they are not a U.S. citizen.
She said if a noncitizen checks that they are a U.S. citizen and comes to jury duty, there’s no way for the county to know that, adding they are not checking the citizenship of people walking in the door and that people are to answer the citizenship question honestly.
She said while officials want people to participate in the juror process, there are people who want to get out of jury duty and may check the noncitizen box.
Rittner said Macomb County has two questionnaires, with the first qualifying voters for jury service. One of the questions asks if the person is a U.S. citizen. If they return a no response, she said, “we prompt them to provide supporting documentation to prove that they are not a citizen.”
Contact Christina Hall: chall@freepress.com. Follow her on X: @challreporter.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Macomb County clerk concerned after noncitizens appear in jury pool
Reporting by Christina Hall, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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