Navy veteran and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Adam Schwarze recently claimed that an in-person vote was cast under his name during Minnesota’s 2012 general election while he was more than 2,000 miles away attending the U.S. Navy SEAL training in Coronado, Calif.
“While I was there, Minnesota says I voted in-person. That’s physically impossible,” he wrote in an X post. Elaborating in a interview to Fox News Digital, Schwarze alleged that someone other than himself registered him to vote in 2009 and that a ballot was cast in his name in 2012. But he says he didn’t even vote that year.
Schwarze said he started the six-month SEAL training at the beginning of June 2012 and explained that “you’re not going home for weekends, holidays.”
The Republican Senate hopeful also recalled that voting in the 2012 election actually came up as a topic during training. Schwarze said instructors questioned Navy SEAL candidates about whether they had submitted absentee ballots after the election took place.
“All the instructors, the morning after the election, we woke up, Obama won the election, and they said, ‘Who didn’t do their absentee voting?’” Schwarze said.
“And of course it was like a gotcha, none of the SEAL candidates had gone to do their absentee voting. We were all in SEAL training, right?” he added. “So, they beat the snot out of us for three hours because all the SEAL instructors were angry that Obama had gotten reelected.”
Schwarze argued that his personal experience demonstrates the need for stronger election safeguards, including passage of the federal SAVE America Act, legislation that would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections and institute a voter ID requirement.
“I’ve fought my entire life for the United States of America,” Schwarze wrote in his post on X. “One of the pillars and foundational principles of democracy is free, fair and transparent elections.”
In the Fox News interview, Schwarze connected his allegations to broader concerns about fraud in Minnesota.
“We don’t know how deep this goes,” he said. “The fraud of your tax dollars is not happening in a vacuum. It’s connected to other forms of fraud, like election integrity.”
Alpha News reached out to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office for comment on Schwarze’s claims. The office did not respond before publication.
Schwarze plans to hold a press conference Wednesday morning at 10:15 a.m. outside of the Secretary of State’s Office to demand answers on his case.
His campaign said in a press release that he “will call on Secretary of State Steve Simon, Gov. Tim Walz, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, and Attorney General Keith Ellison to open the state’s voting logs and explain how this happened — and how many other Minnesotans may have been ‘voted’ without their knowledge.”
Rachael Van Rossum
Rachael Van Rossum is a journalist and author who studies political science in the Twin Cities. She previously interned with the Illinois House of Representatives and recently published her debut fantasy novel "The Hellburner of Sovi." Rachael is passionate about telling compelling stories and bringing to life the voices of political figures, athletes, and members of her community through engaging writing. She is the Alpha News journalism fellow for the summer of 2026.
