Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson continued her legacy media smear campaign against X owner Elon Musk on Tuesday with an appearance on MSNBC.
MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire set the stage for the conversation by insinuating the world’s richest man is intimidating Benson by calling out the Democratic Secretary of State’s election misinformation on the social media platform he owns.
“As voting begins, let’s talk about the idea of intimidation,” Lemire said. “First of all, Elon Musk, by highlighting you by name, tell us a little bit about it. Do you have safety concerns? But also we know the Trump campaign has tried to enlist poll watchers throughout the battleground states, they say to keep an eye on things to make sure it’s fair.”
🚨NEW: MI SOS Jocelyn Benson continues anti-@elonmusk media blitz — this time, MSNBC and Benson attempt to tie Musk to voter “intimidation” and question legality of $1M petition-signer giveaways.
Unbelievable. A Sec of State doing a multi-day legacy media smear campaign. Clear… pic.twitter.com/0yDpTE3rRo
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) October 22, 2024
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Lemire continued: “But other voting rights groups have suggested it’s an effort to dissuade people from voting, What are you seeing in Michigan?”
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Benson painted herself as a nonpartisan arbitrator of Michigan’s 2024 election while suggesting Trump supporters are poised to wreak havoc on Nov. 5.
“Transparency is our friend and we welcome people to observe the process, but we draw a line where disruption occurs. And we have some indication, some chatter, that disruption could occur on Election Day,” Benson alleged without citing specifics. “If that does, we’ll be ready. We’ve been doing scenario planning and we’ve got a field team across the state ready to respond and de-escalate any incidents that might occur and protect the people who are participating in democracy and making democracy work for everyone.”
Benson also vowed to “address and seek consequences for anyone who will disrupt our process.”
MSNBC’s Willie Geist predicted “Donald Trump and his allies, and probably Elon Musk will say that it was rigged, it was fixed, they’ll point to some conspiracy theories” in the event of a tight Trump loss, and posed the question: “How are you prepared to defend your process and show voters it was a free and fair election?”
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Benson said she’ll leverage “partnerships with people … on both sides of aisle defending the facts, the truth about our elections.
“We have secure layers in place with paper ballots and we do audits after the fact to ensure our outcomes are accurate,” Benson said. “All that to say the citizens of Michigan and citizens around this country really need to be critical consumers of information in this moment.”
“The efforts to fool us and fool citizens about our elections only work if we are uninformed,” she said before plugging her state election website where she will be “responding to conspiracy theories with truth.”
The Secretary of State also weighed in on Musk’s daily $1 million prizes for voters who sign a petition to support the U.S. Constitution, alleging the effort may be illegal.
“It is illegal to pay someone to register and it is illegal to pay someone to vote,” she said, ignoring the fact that Musk’s effort does neither. “And so if that’s what’s happening here, I think legal authorities will look into that the state and federal level.
“I just think that it’s a little unnerving that someone would try to manipulate the election process in this way,” Benson said.
The Tuesday appearance is the latest in Benson’s ongoing war against Musk that has also included a state investigation into his America PAC and allegations X’s AI search assistant Grok produced false information about the election.
Benson on Saturday attacked Musk as a “troll” on X for highlighting an issue that’s fueling distrust and questions about transparency in Michigan’s election process.
“Michigan has more registered voters than eligible citizens!? Is that true @CommunityNotes?” Musk posted.
The site’s fact checkers responded with a community note that asserts “Michigan plans to remove over 600,000 inactive voters by 2027.”
“The state currently has 8.4 million registered voters, according to the latest records obtained by Bridge Michigan, nearly 500,000 more than the number of people in the state who are old enough to vote,” the note read, linking to a Bridge Michigan analysis, the federal register, and the Michigan Secretary of State’s own website.
The facts, however, were immediately countered with misinformation from Benson, who alleged “Musk is pushing a misleading number that includes 1.2 million inactive records slated for removal in accordance with the law.”
“Don’t feed the trolls,” Benson wrote.
“Jocelyn Michelle Benson, shame on you for blatantly lying to the public!” Musk wrote. “You only plan to remove the ineligible voters AFTER this election. That necessarily means that there are far more people registered to vote than there eligible voters.”
Benson first appeared on a different MSNBC program over the weekend to discuss the “personal attacks on her by billionaire Elon Musk.” Neither of the recent appearances involved any discussion on the state’s bloated voter rolls or Benson’s ongoing efforts in court to keep them that way. Benson and her spokespeople have also attacked Musk and Trump supporters on CBS News, CNN, in The Washington Post and elsewhere for “spreading dangerous disinformation.”
The Michigan Department of State website puts the number of registered Michigan voters at 8,441,536, with 339,551 inactive voter registrations slated for cancellation in 2025, and another 258,175 in 2027.
Benson is widely viewed as a Democratic contender to replace Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2026.
When Benson took office, the state’s voter rolls sat at 7.5 million, or about 300,000 fewer than a voting age population of about 7.8 million. Four years later, the state had added 700,000 registrations – many automatically through driver’s license renewals – swelling the voter rolls to 8.2 million for a voting age population of 7.9 million by 2022, the year Democrats regained a Michigan government trifecta for the first time in 40 years.
The imbalance, the third largest in the country, has been detailed in multiple lawsuits filed by the Republican National Committee, as well as the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which produced a documentary highlighting numerous registered voters who died decades ago.
“In 2020, Michigan had one county with registration rates above 100% of the voting age population,” according to the most recent RNC lawsuit. “Now it has 53.”
The Bridge analysis shows at least 11 counties have 120% or more registrations than legal voters.