Michigan Republicans scored another legal victory last week when a Michigan Court of Claims judge ordered Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to clarify incomplete election guidance.

Last month, the Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit against Benson over improper guidance to local election officials that instructed clerks and election inspectors to process and count bail ballots with missing stub numbers.

On Oct. 3, Judge Brock Swartzle ordered Benson to revise page 7 of her “Election Inspectors’ Procedure Manual” that states “without exposing any votes, the election inspector should verify that the number on the ballot stub agrees with the ballot recorded for the voter in the (Qualified Voter File) Absent Voter List.”

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The passage, Swartzle ordered, “shall be revised” to read, “Without exposing any votes, the election inspector must verify that the number on the ballot stub agrees with the ballot number on the face of the absent voter return envelope.”

“For the sake of clarity, defendants can, as an additional step, continue with the current practice that the ballot stub number should be compared with the ballot number recorded in the QVF Absent Voter List, but, at a minimum, the Manual must be revised to reflect the statutory requirement that the ballot stub number must be compared to the number on the return envelope,” Swartzle wrote.

During a hearing in the case, Benson conceded that ballots with mismatched serial numbers could be the result of voter fraud, and the RNC “applauds the finding by the Court requiring … Benson to follow Michigan law requiring ballot number matching,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement.

“Ballot number matching requirements are commonsense safeguards which make it easy to vote and hard to cheat,” he said. “We will not stop fighting for a secure election in Michigan and across the country.”

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Michigan GOP Chairman Pete Hoekstra noted litigation “was once again what it took to force Jocelyn Benson to follow Michigan’s election laws and ensure that Michiganders can be confident in our electoral process.

“Ballot number matching requirements are a simple way to protect the integrity of our elections, and Michiganders deserve that peace of mind,” he said.

The lawsuit is one of many filed by Republicans in the current election cycle challenging incomplete guidance from Benson’s office that exposes the state’s elections to potential fraud.

Another filed in September forced Benson to issue new guidance last week on signature verification after the RNC alleges thousands of ballots were improperly tabulated during the state’s August primary in Warren.

Those ballots were counted “despite the complete absence of a statement by the clerk on the corresponding return envelope that the absent voter ballot is approved for tabulation as expressly required” under Michigan law, the lawsuit read.

Guidance issued by Benson in February 2024 did not inform clerks of the requirement in the law to include “a statement by the city or township clerk that the absent voter ballot is approved for verification” once the voter’s signature is verified.

Without that verification, the law states “the clerk shall reject the absent voter ballot and provide the elector with notice of the opportunity to cure the deficiency.”

“In response to our lawsuit, Secretary Benson has updated her guidance to require proof that signatures have been verified before ballots are counted,” according to a RNC statement.

Other lawsuit naming Benson, who is angling to replace Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2026, have focused on the state’s bloated voter rolls, which are currently at 105% of the voting age population, as well as “presumption of validity” guidance for absentee ballots, Democrat poll workers outnumbering Republicans in Detroit 7-to-1, and Benson’s arrangement with the Biden-Harris administration to utilize Small Business Administration and Veterans Affairs sites in Democratic areas for voter registration efforts.

Still other RNC legal efforts in Michigan question Benson’s efforts to implement a ban on local officials investigating fraud during recounts for 2024, despite the new law’s effective date in 2025.

Another lawsuit from 130 Michigan voters claims Benson’s “unlawful guidance for elections” and how the Secretary of State implemented Proposal 2 election reforms approved by deceived voters in 2022, has made it “impossible for the State of Michigan to guarantee all legally eligible Michigan voters a free, fair, lawful, secure, and transparent election process in the 2024 elections.”

“This is a pattern on Benson’s part, time after time really trying to get rid of election safeguards,” Claire Zunk, election integrity spokeswoman for the RNC, told The Federalist. “We have had multiple lawsuits against her, and it’s a result of her guidance that the law is not being followed properly.”