Capitol News

Former Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers has drawn attention after making unsubstantiated claims about the results of Michigan’s 2024 Senate race. In a video obtained by The Detroit News, Rogers asserted that voter fraud in Detroit influenced the outcome, specifically referencing a van allegedly delivering ballots that he said “swung” the race against him.

Rogers told supporters at an event in Muskegon on October 17, 2025: “Here’s the problem, we had one—this is important for all of us Republicans here and conservatives, 100,000 people walked into the poll, they voted for Donald Trump, and they turned around and left. They didn’t vote for one other Republican on the ticket. If we’d have gotten nine thousand of those folks, we would have won, that works out to about 232 votes per county. That’s how short we were. It did so happen that at 5:30 in the morning we were winning, a van in Detroit showed up with [*air quotes*] ‘ballots.’ We ended up losing that thing by about 17,000 votes.”

Rogers’ comments are notable because he conceded defeat to Democrat Elissa Slotkin soon after results were announced in November 2024 and made no immediate allegations of fraud or wrongdoing at that time. His recent statements echo unproven theories from past elections and mark a shift from his previous stance. Following similar unfounded claims made after the 2020 presidential election, Rogers himself wrote an op-ed criticizing such conspiracy theories as “an abdication of the higher responsibility to our Constitution.” When contacted for evidence regarding his new assertions about the Senate race, neither Rogers nor his campaign responded.

Chris Thomas, former Michigan elections director who now assists with elections in Detroit, described Rogers’ suggestions as “ridiculous — perhaps even more so than the claims people made after the 2020 presidential election,” according to reporting from Deadline Detroit.

Media outlets including Michigan Advance, WLNS, Deadline Detroit, and POLITICO have noted both Rogers’ lack of evidence and his prior opposition to such narratives.

Rogers is seeking to run again for U.S. Senate in 2026 as current Senator Gary Peters plans retirement.