LANSING — Amid reports that GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers recently said he wants to recruit current and former police officers to monitor Detroit voters at the polls and suggested they could “flash their badges at voters,” Rogers spent yesterday doubling down, refusing to acknowledge concerns about intimidating voters of color, and publicly questioning the results of his 2024 Senate race:

In a new Monday interview with WJR after the news broke, Rogers side-stepped a question about voter intimidation concerns (listen here). And according to new reporting from Gongwer, Rogers not only “doubled down,” but his campaign continued to insist, without evidence, that there are still “lingering questions and concerns about the last election” – which Rogers has falsely and repeatedly claimed he lost because of “a single van carrying ballots in Detroit.”

Read key quotes from Gongwer’s reporting: 

• Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers is not backing away from questioning the integrity of Michigan elections, but former Lt. Gov. John Cherry says that exactly the kind of rhetoric political leaders should be avoiding.

• Rogers also repeated his claims about a van showing up in Detroit early in the morning after Election Day with ballots. In remarks over the last year, Rogers has said that the van of ballots “swung” his 2024 race against U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, which he lost by about 19,000 votes.

• Notably, when Rogers first ran for the U.S. House in 2000, his opponent, Dianne Byrum led with about 75% of the precincts reporting on election night. She declared herself the winner about midnight. Almost three decades ago, Rogers, at about 2:30 a.m., refused to concede anything. “This isn’t over yet. If you hang with us, we’ll be here early in the morning. We don’t think the fat lady is even warming up to sing yet,” he said then.
  
  
• Now, Rogers said he wanted to recruit police officers as poll-watchers because they wouldn’t be intimidated by election workers.

• “Under Michigan law, both Democratic and Republican parties, and probably other organizations as well, have the ability to go in and appoint poll watchers and there are provisions in how you have to conduct yourself while you’re doing it,” [Cherry] said. “There are provisions that allow observation, but to somehow suggest it needs to be former police officers? Are they going to be operating with a badge? Are they going to be using old uniforms? Is this about intimidation or is it about assuring the integrity of the election.”

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