Michigan state Sen. Ruth Johnson, R-Holly, is calling current Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, the most partisan SOS in her recollection.

Johnson’s memory as a public servant extends all the way back to 1988, when she first ran for local office. From there, she served as a Michigan House representative from 1999 to 2002. From 2011 to 2019, she served as Michigan’s Secretary of State, which she asserts gives her a unique perspective on Benson’s tenure in the same office.

Suffice it to say, Johnson’s perspective isn’t terribly complimentary toward her 2010 campaign opponent, whom she defeated with 50.7% of the vote to Benson’s 45.2%.

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In a telephone interview with The Midwesterner, Johnson called Benson “Michigan’s most partisan Secretary of State who has violated more laws and the Constitution than all the secretary of states in recent history.”

In an opinion piece published in the Detroit News this week, Johnson elaborated: “When I served as Michigan’s secretary of state, I took impartiality in that role very seriously.”

Specifically,  Johnson was referring to Benson’s investigation of Elon Musk’s political action committee and the artificial intelligence search assistant Grok employed by Musk-owned X that the SOS alleges spreads “false information” about the upcoming November election.

“Benson, however, didn’t seem so concerned about what data was being collected when she personally worked with ‘Rock the Vote’ to allow them to do the exact same thing. In fact, she even bragged about their partnership in an official press release,” she wrote.

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“[I]t is very troubling to see the current secretary of state investigating a right-leaning group for helping to register voters online yet helping a left-leaning group to do the exact same thing.”

In her interview with The Midwesterner, Johnson repeated her Detroit News charge that Michigan’s current voter rolls have been neglected, perhaps intentionally, by Benson. She noted that the rolls represent 105% of the state’s eligible voting-age population.

She also cited the fact that Benson refused to prune 177,000 outdated names from the state’s voter rolls until she was ordered by a judge to do so. Another judge ruled that Benson’s guidance to election officials to presume absentee ballot signatures were valid prior to the November 2022 election was unconstitutional.

According to Johnson, Benson “also sent out over 800,000 absentee ballot requests to people that were not qualified to vote in Michigan.”

Johnson also told The Midwesterner that Benson advocated for Proposal 2 on the 2022 ballot, which misled voters into believing the proposed Constitutional amendment would  require voters to show photo identification, but did exactly the opposite.

As she stated in her Detroit News piece: “Repeated television commercials funded by interest groups told Michigan voters that Proposal 2 of 2022 would enshrine ‘voter ID requirements’ into our state’s Constitution. But what those ads failed to mention was that those “voter ID requirements” included the ability to vote with no photo ID whatsoever.”

Johnson doesn’t hold Benson solely responsible for her view that election integrity in Michigan has been undermined. She also cites Attorney General Dana Nessel’s recent cease and desist letter to a Ross Township resident in Kalamazoo County. In that letter, above AG Criminal Trials Division Chief Robbin N. Liddell’s signature, the AG claimed the resident is “in violation of Michigan election law” for expressing an opinion that the location of two election polling booths were changed without giving the legally required 60 days notice to voters.

“It has come to the attention of our office that you have spread misleading or false election information regarding polling locations in Ross Township through on-line sites. Specifically MCL 168.932(a) prohibits and criminalizes this conduct,” Liddell wrote.

The previous week, Benson appeared with Nessel at the National Press Foundation’s “Election Security” fellowship in Detroit to discuss how Democrats are seeking the media’s assistance in  “prebunking” perceived misinformation” in the run up to the November election. Benson specifically cited “noncitizen voting as a scare tactic.”

Johnson noted that Michigan’s 2022 Democratic trifecta created an imbalance of checks and balances in Lansing politics as a result of reelecting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Nessel, Benson, and elected  Democratic majorities in the state House and Senate.

“We’ve stripped away periodically over the years now the integrity and checks and balances and transparency of our elections,” she said. “We’re doing a great disservice to everyone because when we get done with an election we need to be assured it was done with transparency.”

Johnson said Benson, Nessel, and Whitmer have taken away critical checks and balances in Michigan’s election process.

“Now the Democrats own the baseball, the bat, the gloves, and the stadium,” she said.