WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The WRFH Interview: Anthony Forlini

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Anthony G. Forlini, current Macomb County Clerk, is running to be Michigan’s next Secretary of State. He joins WRFH's Olivia Glisson to discuss his campaign. From 09/23/26.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Olivia Gleason. With me today is Anthony Forlini. Anthony Ferlini is the current McComb County Clerk and a former Michigan State Representative. He is now the Republican nominee for Secretary of State and is looking to be elected on November 3rd. Thank you so much for talking with us today. Hi, Olivia. Thanks for having me on. To start, we would just love you to tell our listeners about yourself and why you decided to run for Michigan Secretary of State. Sure. Well, Olivia, you know, I started my political career as a township supervisor. And then under the grand home years, where jobs were leaving Michigan, including my own kids. I got fed up. And I decided to run for a state representative, as a state representative, representing the eastern side of McComb County. And I did that for six years. I felt like we did a pretty good job taking a situation where the state was, in shambles and trouble on the verge of insolvency and turning it around and making it,

I'll just say making Michigan great again. And then for the last five years, almost six years, I've been the county clerk of McComb County where we've wrestled with issues such as voting integrity, with long lines, with weight, and tackled all that, and we got the most transparent elections now in the state of Michigan, and we got our wait times in the third largest county in the state of Michigan down under four minutes before you can get into the appointment, and 10 minutes you're out the door. And I'm proud of that, and because of those things, and because of the transparency, we've been able to bring to elections in McComb County and the efficiencies that we won national recognition for,

we decided that we were going to run for Secretary State to try to do the same thing there, make our elections more believable, more transparent, take the wait times down, get rid of the appointment only, and have appointment as well as walk-ins available. So that's what we're bringing to the state, and that's what our intention is, and that's why I'm running. Yeah, great. Thank you so much for that. Can you expand a little bit? about what Michigan Secretary of State does and what the responsibilities are of the job? Sure. So I think most people, particularly recently, think of elections quite a bit and the responsibilities

of overseeing the elections at the state, although in Michigan, most elections, all of our elections are held at a local level administered by the local municipalities, overseen by the county clerks, and that's all overseen by the Secretary of State. So you have that element. The next element that historically has been the most significant is the Secretary of State offices that deal with things such as the driver's licenses that you carry in your wallet, the license on your plates on your cars, the boating registrations, and various other things within that department. That is what the Secretary of State does at that level. And the one that nobody ever thinks of is the Office of the Great Seal.

And the Office of the Great Seal is the most overlooked and the area that probably needs the most amount of attention because there's, I ask the question all the time, who is notarizing the notaries? It's a problem because the bad guys have figured that out and there's fraud rampant across the state and that's something that we got to, we got to really fix in that department. You say on your website that your experience in both local and state government gives you a deep understanding of how to run a modern, accountable, and citizen-focused secretary of state's office. How do you think your previous roles will impact how you go into this role? Well, there's a lot of parallels between the county clerk's office and the Secretary of State

office. We are a front-facing office as the county clerk. I represent 850,000 people, and they come to us for services, just like they would to a Secretary of State's office. They come to us for their vital records. They come to us for their things, like death certificates, birth certificates, for their CPLs. And we service them. We give them that type of information. We service them at that level. Also the registered deeds, and again, that's front-facing all the deeds in the county

pass through my office. And I'm also the clerk of the court. So these things parallel the Secretary of State's office where we do elections. you know, they're administered between me and my local clerks with the oversight of the Secretary of State. So being a county clerk gives me the frontline experience that I'm the only one in this race with that frontline experience to be able to represent all the local clerks in the state. So between the front-facing services that are being offered by the 1,300 employees across the state, That's the kind of thing that we do with, I have 100 employees here.

We're the front facing for all the citizens in McComb County. Right. And you have the unique experience of working under a different Secretary of State. So what do you think is lacking under Jocelyn Benson that you hope to change during your time in office? Well, the biggest thing is the communication between the Secretary of State. state's office and the local clerks. Right now, it's nonexistent. There's been almost zero communication. There's no dedicated line for the local clerks. When we call, we oftentimes get voicemail. We're going to end that. Just like I ended voicemail in my office, it's not necessary. We need to

answer the phone. When I'm Secretary of State, I will be answering the phone. We will have a direct connection with our clerks working in partnership to make sure our elections are, totally transparent. And that's the thing that seems to end after it leaves McComb County, the transparency ends. And we need to do a better job in communicating how our elections are being held, how we answer the phone. And, you know, in the middle of COVID, I brought all my employees back to work in the office because we are a government agency. What I, what's amazing to me is the amount of employees at the state level that are not back to work. They're working from home, quote unquote, working from home. So I'm just saying that it is important that we bring our employees

back and we service the public the way with the high expectations that were there to serve, not to be served. You're listening to Olivia Glisten with Anthony Forlini on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. So going off of that last question, You've made transparency, Michigan residents can see a major priority for the office. What does that concretely look like in the day-to-day? Well, what does it look like? Well, I'll tell you what it looks like here. I can answer, I don't talk about theories.

I talk about actually getting it done. In McComb County, we've done things to make sure we do hash validations on our tabularies. We trained all of our clerks. What does that mean? It means if there's any interruption, any outside of the court. interference within the tabulators, we expose it. It means that we turn our tabulators on so that they scan the ballots. Those images are retained, and it shows how the tabulator scored each of those ballots. Not only did we do that, but we're the only county in the state of Michigan that put those

ballots up on the internet. And so you can go to our website. You can see every tabulator, every ballot style, how the tabulator scored, the actual ballot itself, and how the tabulator scored that ballot. That's transparency at the utmost. When you FOIA our office, we're responsive. We get information out to people. We help them because they're trying to get information. We help them within the law. And it's not overly costly.

It is just part of what we do to make sure transparency is the first most important thing because we don't want people questioning our integrity. We want to make sure that we're out front on all of this stuff. So that's what it looks like at the Secretary of State's office under Tony Forlaney. We're going to be there to be there for the public to offer everything we can offer without exposing people's confidentiality, their confidential information. But people need to know how their elections work. I will work with my local clerks. I will work with my county clerks. I will work with the federal government to the extent that it's within the law within the state of Michigan to make sure we have

clean elections and we work as partners, not as adversaries. Yeah, that's so important. You were recently endorsed by four Democrat leaders who crossed party lines to give you support. What does it mean to be supported by not only your own party, but also leaders from the Democratic Party? Well, most people that have known me through the years know that the partisan issues are not important to me. I am paid to do a job. I am elected to represent everybody at either as a township supervisor, everyone within my township, as a legislator, everyone within my district, and as a county clerk, everybody within the county of Michigan, not just Republicans, not just Democrats. And so as a result, people understand that. And I hold pretty near and dear to it because, listen, we're all

Americans at the end of the day. And the people that have endorsed me understand that. They understand that I am there for them at every level. So, and I don't play games, political games. I just do what's right by the people of Michigan. And going off of that, again, Michigan is a swing state with a of diverse mix of all types of people. So how do you intend to serve both parties in Michigan as Secretary of State, not just focusing on one party's issues? Well, by doing the job. I think it's real simple. To me, it's not complicated. You know, there's things that statutorily I need to do and get done. I get those things done. I don't go outside of those, you know, to look at party politics. It's not my way of thinking.

And I think most Americans can appreciate that. So when you talk about diversity, listen, I started training my election workers in the county. The northern part of my county is mostly Republicans. A southern part of my county is mostly Democrat. I started training election workers bringing that diversity to the county level and developing a database of employees, I'm sorry, of election workers that my local clerks can pick from. So if they're short of Democrats, those Democrats will have a list of Republicans that they can choose from to help them work and vice versa. And I've proven that you can get the job done and do it right

by offering diversity and by offering the opportunity that everyone has their eyes on the elections. You've talked a lot about elections because they're a big part of the role of the Secretary of State and a controversial topic in current politics. Can you say five concrete goals for facilitating the voting process in Michigan? Well, you know, there's probably more than that. But I can tell you the things that are a priority to me. Right now, the Secretary of State's office is looking at the new, tabulators, a new technology. The tabulators that we have is 10 years old and, and let me say they're

more like 15 years old now because it took a while to get them approved and then, you know, to the process of getting them 10 years ago, they were already a little bit long in the tooth. The new tablators that they're looking at, I don't know what the hang up is right now and why the Secretary of State's taken so long, but that's going to be one of the priorities to make sure that these new tabulators are transparent and that they have a high amount of security. That's going to be the first priority. The other thing, we talk about things like

we actually have our paper that we use for our ballots is all watermarked. I think that's critical that we do that statewide, that the paper is sacred, that the paper that we're using is, has been watermarked. I believe every tabulator, like I said before, needs to have its scanning function on so that we know how these tabulators are scoring the ballots. And that should be posted. It should be publicly available information. Training all the clerks, the biggest thing I find

when I talk to the clerks, and I got a meeting today with them, is what is it that the local clerks need and be able to support their needs so that they have and they run good elections, listening to our local clerks, the people that are actually on the front lines. And there's all kinds of challenges and whatnot that they have. We need to look at our primary dates. Just yesterday, I got a ballot verification from one of the county clerks. just came in yesterday. Now, if my name was spelled wrong,

I'd have to tell them that it's been spelled wrong. And they, I'm certain they've already gone to print because they've got to get them out this week. And here it is. I just got the ballot just yesterday. That's because the clerks are under a tremendous amount of pressure of, and the Secretary of State's office has taken way too long to get these to us,

the actual ballot language and what have you. And when they did it, they got it wrong, to be honest. So this is something that we have to focus on to take the pressure off the local clerks by giving them enough time, moving the primary date, which is a legislative thing, moving that back a couple months to give them a little bit more time to process and get their ballots out to the public in a fashion that is statutorily required by them to get it out. So those are a few. This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM.

I'm Olivia Glisten and I'm talking with Anthony Ferlini. So there's a lot on your website about being for the people. How does this translate directly into your policies and why is this so important to you? Yes. So let me tell you something. That's all it's about. I'm here to service the public. I am here to be an advocate for,

for the public, period. I don't rule over people. People are here, they require a service for me. They're not required to give me a job. I am required to offer a service to do a service to make our society function properly and keep order. You know, Doug Lloyd, who is the Attorney General, he says he's going to maintain law.

And I say, I'm going to maintain order. That's why we call ourselves law and order. And that's the kind of partnership that I expect that we're going to give to the people of Michigan. Law and order, keep away the chaos, make your government function properly because we are here to work for the people. Just to close out, you have an upcoming debate against Lieutenant Governor Garin Gilchrist the second on October 8th. How are you feeling for this debate and how are you preparing? Well, you know, I feel good about it. I think it's important that both of us get our issues out and our ideas out.

And I think it's important that we do the things that need to be done or the people, let people know what we stand for. And I think there's going to be somewhat of a contrast of who we are. And the public is going to make a decision as to who they want as their next Secretary of State. I feel pretty good about where we stand, our experience, our knowledge, our work ethic, and our ability to represent all the people in a very diverse way. So I look forward to having that conversation with Mr. Gilchrist and compare our resumes and compare who we are and let the public decide. Great.

Well, thank you so much for talking with us. Our guest has been Anthony Forlini and I'm Olivia Glisson on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Keep listening to Radio Free Hillsdale for all the upcoming election coverage.