Fair Election Fund Gives Michigan’s Jocelyn Benson a “D” Grade in Scathing Report on Her Failure to Enforce Election Laws
The Fair Election Fund (FEF), a nonpartisan national election integrity watchdog group, today announced a new effort to evaluate the performance of Secretaries of State and hold them accountable for their performance administering recent elections with a focus on the 2024 campaign. Over the coming weeks and months, the group will publish detailed reports assigning letter grades to the performance of various election officials in seven battleground states. FEF’s five-part analysis focuses on the areas that have the greatest impact on the effective administration of elections, increasing transparency, and increasing voter confidence.
The group’s first report in its planned series evaluated the performance of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and gave her a “D” grade due to her multiple and continued failures that undermine the confidence of voters in Michigan. The report follows Benson’s recent admission that at least sixteen non-citizens voted in Michigan elections in November, but yet she put out a statement last week opposing the passage of legislation in the U.S. House that keeps illegal migrants from voting
FEF concluded that Secretary Benson’s multiple actions in 2024 undermined the confidence of voters in Michigan. Her most prominent offenses are below:
- Benson resisted efforts to maintain and update Michigan’s voter registration lists.
- Under Benson’s watch, a Chinese national voted in the general election, his vote counted, and he was only caught because he proactively turned himself in.
- In 2024, Benson was sued because 53 of the state’s 83 counties appeared to have more active registered voters than adult citizens, and the 23 additional counties had unusually high registration rates exceeding 90%.
- Benson issued instructions that any person who is a United States citizen and who has at least one parent who lived in Michigan for any period of time may vote in Michigan ad infinitum.
- Benson has issued election instructions inconsistent with Michigan law.
- In 2024, Benson directed election officials to apply a “presumption of validity” to signatures on absentee ballots.
ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND ON THE FAIR ELECTION FUND:
- In March, the Fair Election Fund filed commentary with the FCC on the issue raised against CBS for unlawful news distortion and coordination with the Harris 2024 Presidential Campaign in the network’s 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris last year.
- In August of 2024, the Fair Election Fund uncovered 60,000 potential cases of donor fraud involving the Biden-Harris campaign and ActBlue and turned over the data to Republican Attorney Generals across the country.
- The Fair Election Fund successfully stopped national Democrats’ voter suppression scheme in states across the country last year. In October 2024, FEF launched a six-figure paid media campaign that exposed Marc Elias’s failed racist lawsuits that tried to disenfranchise thousands of black voters who signed petitions to get Cornel West on the ballot in their respective battleground states.
- The Fair Election Fund invested over $750,000 in paid media efforts last year to expose the Democrats’ attempts to block Kamala Harris’s competition from the ballot. The Fair Election Fund invested in states such as North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Click here to learn more about the Democrats’ failed election interference scheme and how the Fair Election Fund stood up for voting rights.
- Last year, the Fair Election Fund launched an investigation examining the jury summons responses and voter rolls in key swing state counties to identify voter fraud.