On Thursday 22 GOP members of the Michigan House and Senate sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi requesting that the Department of Justice (DOJ) send election monitors to provide oversight for Michigan’s 2026 primary and general elections.
One of their major causes of concern? Michigan’s secretary of state, Democrat Jocelyn Benson — the state’s chief election official and consistent opponent of election integrity — is running for governor, and in 2026 she will oversee her own election results when she appears on the ballot.
There is recent precedent for the lawmakers’ suggested move, with the DOJ having monitored polling sites in six jurisdictions in California and New Jersey this month for the Nov. 4 election. “Transparency at the polls translates into faith in the electoral process,” Bondi said in a statement announcing the plan. DOJ monitors were in Passaic County, New Jersey, and in California’s Kern, Riverside, Fresno, Orange, and Los Angeles Counties.
“Secretary Benson will be administering an election in which she has a direct personal stake in the outcome,” the GOP lawmakers noted. “Such a situation risks compromising the impartiality required for fair election oversight and demands external federal scrutiny to maintain public trust.” The letter goes on to describe numerous troubling decisions Benson has made.
Benson has refused to share Michigan’s statewide voter registration lists with federal authorities. The DOJ went to court on Sept. 25 to demand the records from Michigan and four other Democrat-led states, along with New Hampshire. The move prevents the attorney general from examining the records and enforcing the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which were created “to ensure that states have proper and effective voter registration and voter list maintenance programs.”
Her argument is that she is protecting Michigan citizens from the federal government getting their private information, like Social Security numbers or driver’s licenses, but the federal government issues Social Security numbers and seems to have a system for safely working with personal information.
The result is a lack of transparency on voter rolls that badly need to be examined. A lawsuit brought by election watchdog Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) claimed Benson had not complied with the NVRA by failing to conduct maintenance of voter registration lists. PILF said Michigan was not making a reasonable effort to remove dead voters, noting it had found more than 25,000 dead voters on the voter rolls, including nearly 4,000 who had been dead for 20 years or more.
The lawmakers’ letter notes that at least 16 noncitizens voted in the 2024 general election, demonstrating system failures in the voter registration and ballot issuance process. In 2020, Benson allowed the “mass mailing of absentee ballot applications to all registered voters without legislative approval.” And Benson has been involved in nearly 70 election-related lawsuits, according to the letter.
The letter also describes the improper way Benson kicked off her campaign for governor.
“On Jan. 22, 2025, she announced her candidacy in the lobby of the Richard H. Austin Building, a state-owned facility housing her own department, in clear violation of Michigan’s Campaign Finance Act, as confirmed by an investigation from the Michigan attorney general’s office. Although the attorney general issued only a warning without further penalties, this incident exemplifies a pattern of disregard for the laws she is sworn to uphold.”
GOP State Sens. Aric Nesbitt, Ruth Johnson, Joe Bellino, Kevin Daley, Michele Hoitenga, Dan Lauwers, Jim Runestad, Lana Theis, and Michael Webber signed the Nov. 13 letter, as did State Reps. Rachelle Smit, Steve Carra, Jay DeBoyer, Joseph Fox, Mike Hoadley, Nancy Jenkins-Arno, Gina Johnsen, Tom Kunse, Matt Maddock, Greg Markkanen, Dave Prestin, Jason Woolford, and Jennifer Wortz.
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
