By Patrick Colbeck
On May 17, 2022, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson unveiled in a press conference and press release what she referred to as her “Safe and Secure” election policy initiative. She highlighted four key proposals within this policy initiative. These proposals are summarized and analyzed in the following table.
Benson Policy Summary and Analysis
| Benson Proposal | Benson Statements | Political Translation | Important Background |
| Get Michigan voters election results on election night by allowing preprocessing of absentee ballots | Clerks should be allowed to pre-process absentee ballots 7 days prior to the closing of the polls. Voters deserve speedy reporting of results. Delays in reporting of votes gives time for election deniers to insert doubt Faith in our process requires speedy results. | Speed more important than integrity or transparency. | Early tabulation of results equates to early voting. Early voting is a key tenet of election fraud. Early voting enables fraudsters to project election results prior to the polls closing which tells them how many votes they need to inject, flip or delete. |
| Strengthen the security of elections with consistent and sufficient funding | Provide $100M annually directly to county, township governments Too long we have relied upon local funding | Pandering to clerks to encourage their support for policy initiatives. Attempting to buy support of local clerks. Another tax and spend policy. | Mark Zuckerberg has stated that he will not be funding any 2022 election initiatives. Progressives need a “Zuck bucks” replacement to pay off political operatives. |
| Increase penalties for anyone who threatens, harasses or doxxes election workers | Protect the people who protect our democracy. Election officials have been victims of threats. We need stiffer penalties for such threats. | Accuse others of what you are guilty of using a complicit media to hide the truth. Also, pander yet again to clerks to encourage their support for policy initiatives by carving them out as a special class of citizens meriting special protections under the law. | While no specific examples were cited in support of her assertions that election officials had been threatened, it is noteworthy that Jocelyn Benson’s office has initiated threats against election officials (e.g. Adams Township Clerk Stephanie Scott). Notably, none of the affidavits of threats to poll challengers at the TCF Center in Detroit were cited. MI State Representative-Elect Abraham Aiyash doxxed the daughter of Wayne County Canvasser Monica Palmer during public comments after she voted not to certify 2020 general election. Wayne State University Vice President Ned Stabler was verbally abusive to Wayne County Canvassers Monica Palmer and Bill Hartman. MI State Representative Cynthia Johnson has issued threats to anyone supporting President Trump. No charges were filed under existing statute. See their comments in the The 2020 Coup book and trailer. We are a constitutional republic not a democracy – big difference. Special classes of citizens is a clear violation of Michigan Constitution Article I Section 1. |
| Protect the voting rights of military service members and their spouses | Enable military personnel to submit votes electronically. 25% of military ballots were returned too late to be counted. | Anyone opposing these proposals opposes the military. | Same tactic was used to pass Ballot Proposal 2018-3. At the AV Counting Board in Detroit, military ballots were not counted until Republican poll challengers were locked out and pizza boxes were taped to windows to prohibit viewing of spoil and duplicate process required for military ballots. The ballots had been available for processing at least 12 hours prior to that time including long periods of inactivity for poll workers. |
CONCLUSION
The Michigan Secretary of State continued her pursuit of policies designed to weaken the integrity of our elections in her policy announcement of May 17, 2022. The Michigan legislature needs to take punitive action against such pursuits. Not only do they need to refuse her policy requests, they need to use the power of the pursue to convert her budget into a performance level agreement whereby appropriations are only made once certain quality metrics have been met.