The Trump administration is taking Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to court, accusing her of deliberately preventing them from accessing complete voter registration records.
On Thursday, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced the filing of federal lawsuits against six states — California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania for failure to produce their statewide voter registration lists upon request. The lawsuit against Benson was filed in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, charging that she is violating federal law by stonewalling investigators and demanding that she be compelled to turn over the records.
Michigan residents have watched Secretary of State Benson mock efforts by state lawmakers and threaten citizens who ask for transparency in elections since 2020, all in an effort to shield her dirty rolls from scrutiny.
The statement from the DOJ reminds Americans about the importance of well-maintained voter rolls: “Clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “Every state has a responsibility to ensure that voter registration records are accurate, accessible, and secure — states that don’t fulfill that obligation will see this Department of Justice in court.”
“States are required to safeguard American elections by complying with our federal elections laws,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Clean voter rolls protect American citizens from voting fraud and abuse, and restore their confidence that their states’ elections are conducted properly, with integrity, and in compliance with the law.”
Yesterday, in response to the lawsuit against her, the defiant Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, mocked the DOJ’s demand for transparency, saying, “It’s important for every Michigander to understand what’s at stake here – the U.S. Justice Department is trying to get us to turn over the private, personal information of more than 8 million state residents. That includes people’s driver’s license numbers, Social Security numbers, and other personally identifiable information.” Benson called it an” illegal and unconstitutional power grab,” adding, “I told them they can’t have it.”
Perhaps someone should inform Jocelyn Benson that the government has access to the Social Security numbers of all American citizens. It’s not the American citizens who are legally registered to vote in Michigan that the DOJ is concerned about; it’s the ILLEGAL aliens and fake voters created during her 7 years in office that the DOJ is interested in reviewing.
This isn’t the first time Jocelyn Benson’s dirty voter rolls have been challenged. On October 22, 2024, Democrat U.S. District Judge Jane Beckering, who was appointed by the far-left former Governor Jennifer Granholm, ruled against the RNC in their lawsuit against SOS Benson and MI Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater.
The lawsuit claimed that MI SOS Benson and BOE Director Brater/ former ERIC chair, failed to meet the requirements outlined in Section 8 of the NVRA, or National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to maintain clean and accurate voter registration records.
Of the 83 counties in Michigan, the lawsuit claims at least 53 have more active registered voters than adult citizens over 18, and 23 have registrations exceeding 90% of adult citizens over 18. The lawsuit states, “That number of voters is impossibly high.”
In her laughable ruling, the U.S. District judge stated that Republicans, who filed the lawsuit in March, did not provide sufficient evidence and lacked legal standing in their challenge.
On Friday, a stunning decision by a unanimous Sixth Circuit panel affirmed the District Court’s dismissal of the RNC’s case against Benson’s bloated voter rolls.
Benson, who has been on the losing side of multiple lawsuits since her election in 2022, has repeatedly snubbed lawmakers and citizens who’ve questioned what appears to be an intentional effort to keep voter data and voter registration data secret. In addition to her lack of transparency, Benson blatantly violates the law with made-up rules, such as instructing clerks in 2020 to ignore signature matching on absentee ballots during COVID lockdowns, which was responsible for a massive uptick in absentee voting. When she was caught violating campaign finance law by announcing her candidacy for governor in a government building, she shrugged it off. Unbelievably, it’s Jocelyn Benson’s office that is responsible for investigating campaign finance violations. If the Secretary of State is caught violating campaign finance law, the attorney general is supposed to investigate and make the appropriate charges against her, but as is typical in Michigan, the lawless Democrat AG Dana Nessel refused to hold her fellow elected Democrat official accountable.
Only months before the 2024 election, the Gateway Pundit rang the alarm about a plot by Democrats to register 1.7 million new UOCVA (Uniformed Officer and Civilian Voters Act) voters, that they like to refer to as “military” voters, so Americans don’t look too closely at the scheme to register millions of “voters” from overseas who don’t even have to prove they ever lived in the state of Michigan or that they’re American citizens. The Michigan Republican Party attorney, Mike Bishop, and the RNC filed charges against the MI SOS to stop the practice of allowing unvetted “overseas voters” from registering to vote and voting in our elections.
Of course, a liberal Governor Whitmer appointed judge dismissed the case. It was appealed by the RNC and was denied largely on procedural grounds (like laches and the timing of the challenge) rather than a full ruling on all merits.
Last month, Jocelyn Benson sent a letter to clerks, letting them know that she would be allowing overseas “NON-military” voters to use the most insecure form of voting available, online voting, beginning on September 14, 2025. Benson’s new, seemingly insane rule, in fact, was implemented on September 15, which allows unvetted “voters” from unknown locations to vote from their phones in Michigan’s general elections.
Will the DOJ be able to finally rein in Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who has done so much to erode trust in elections, not just among Michigan voters, but among voters across America, who’ve been watching her actions go unchecked for seven years?