Secretary of State candidate Anthony Forlini makes campaign spot in Marquette
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MARQUETTE -- Republican candidate for Secretary of State Anthony Forlini made a campaign stop in Marquette on Thursday, meeting with supporters and news outlets.
In an interview with The Mining Journal, Forlini spoke about three different areas of priority for him, should he take office.
"The first is elections ... people want to get elections secured. They want to feel confident in elections. In order to do that, we need to be transparent."
In his role as Macomb County Clerk, Forlini made several changes to their election procedures, including uploading images to the Macomb County website of cast ballots and how the tabulators scored them.
"We're the only ones in the state of Michigan that did that," said Forlini. "We made that very transparent."
Forlini also implemented hash validations on tabulators, and made sure that all election employees in Macomb County were properly trained.
Forlini's second priority is operational efficiency within Secretary of State Offices.
Forlini plans to make sure that "people have good access, easy access to Secretary of State Offices by virtue of putting them where people go."
He went on to explain that that could look like placing a Secretary of State kiosk at a municipal clerk's office, or even at the grocery store.
"With the kiosks, maybe we shouldn't be charging a fee, because look at how much more efficient it is for us," said Forlini. "…Do it in a way where you can do it with or without an appointment."
"We did it in Macomb. We're the third largest county, we have 850,000 people. We got it to the point where -- it used to be 4 weeks out to get an appointment; it's down to 4 minutes."
Part of Forilini's goal of operational efficiency also includes bringing remote employees back to in-person work and mandating that employees answer the phones -- at the Macomb County Clerk's office, Forlini said that his policies have led to phones being answered 98% of the time.
"During the middle of COVID, I brought all my employees back," said Forlini. "You have to be able to answer the phone. If you're home, you're not answering the phone. You're probably out cutting your grass."
Forlini's third priority is the Office of the Great Seal.
"No one's talking about this, but there's deed theft happening every day," said Forlini. "And it's because the notary division is antiquated ... I don't know who's notarizing the notaries. How do I know that notary signature is legitimate? ...There's a stamp, but you can buy that on Amazon. How do I know that person's a notary? ... How do I know that person's not forging a notary's name?"
Forlini plans to set up an authenticator system for notaries, which he says could be as simple as a phone authenticator app.
"We have to come up with a system, or else the whole system of notaries is out the window," said Forlini.
When asked how he would serve rural Michiganders and Upper Peninsula residents while in office, Forlini replied that " We've had clerk meetings across the state and their concerns about how bigger communities like mine (in Macomb) are served. Most of the programming and whatnot at the state level is focused on that, not rural communities. That's going to be something that we really put a lot of effort into, to see -- maybe they are treated a little differently.
"…System-wide, we have to treat everyone the same so we're getting the same results. But in rural areas, there are different concerns."
Forlini mentioned again that Secretary of State Offices could be placed in areas where people actually frequent, such as Walmart, rather than in brick-and-mortar locations, to make visiting the Secretary of State Office more convenient to people in rural areas.
Unlike other candidates for office, Forlini won't be holding a campaign party on Tuesday.
"I'll be working,” said Forlini. I'm a clerk! ... Since being clerk, the party thing went out the window ... I'll be there, working, until the end of the night."
"For me, this isn't a job that requires you to be partisan," said Forlini. "It requires you to be right. Being wrong doesn’t help anybody. Being political doesn't help anybody, it just causes more chaos and lack of confidence in what we do. Everybody enjoys short lines, it doesn’t matter your party."
Election day is Tuesday.
Annie Lippert can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 550. Her email address is alippert@miningjournal.net.