What do Michigan’s overinflated voter rolls, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s political ambitions, and Democratic powerbrokers like George Soros all have in common?

Some suggest it’s a coordinated plan to weaken election integrity in key battleground states to allow those who oversee elections to propel themselves to higher office.

Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon and former Michigan Secretary of State Sen. Ruth Johnson, R-Holly, discussed that possibility on the Tudor Dixon Podcast on Monday, drawing a line from 2022 through the current election to Benson’s anticipated campaign for governor in 2026.

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“I think we need to understand as we go into Election Day what these secretaries of state are doing. They have said they’re coordinating, so there’s seven different secretaries of state across the country who have said they are coordinating on the 2024 election,” Dixon said.

“It’s a very interesting wording to use in the political world, and that’s why I wanted to bring Ruth Johnson in.”

Johnson defeated Benson to become Secretary of State in 2010 and served in that role from 2011 to 2019. Benson, a former hate crimes investigator for the disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center, told The Boston Globe earlier this month she’s in “constant communication” with election officials in seven battleground states “every day.”

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Since taking over from Johnson, Benson has drastically increased Michigan’s voter registrations to 106.5% of the voting age population, swelling registrations from about 7.5 million, or roughly 300,000 less than the voting age population when she took office, to 8.2 million, or about 300,000 more than the voting age population in 2022, the year Democrats gained a Michigan government trifecta for the first time in 40 years.

Today, total registrations are at 8.4 million, half a million more than the voting age population and the third highest imbalance in the U.S., despite multiple lawsuits from multiple plaintiffs urging Benson’s office to clear ineligible registrations.

Benson has disputed the numbers and attacked those who question them, alleging only 7.2 million are “active” voters. But she has refused to remove inactive registrations, which can still be used to vote, until 2025 and 2027, maintaining the imbalance until after her anticipated campaign for governor in 2026.

“She just does not want to clean the rolls,” said Johnson, who pulled more than 640,000 dead voters, and 3,500 noncitizens from the voter rolls as secretary of state. Combined with election reforms backed by Benson in 2022, the situation is problematic, and Johnson explained why.

The reform package approved by deceived voters eliminated Michigan’s requirement for identification to vote, and “also enables people to register in the 14 days prior to the Election Day, and they can register without showing any ID,” Johnson said.

“We had over 20,000 people who did last time, but we have no real time system to check to see if they’re eligible to vote or if they’ve already voted in another location, and that includes in our state,” she said. “And we have nothing systemically to tell us whether they’ve voted out of state.”

Benson’s efforts to implement the election reforms also faced multiple lawsuits from Republicans and others, resulting in court rulings that found Benson repeatedly violated the law. One pending lawsuit from 130 Michigan voters argues Benson 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.”

While Benson has threatened local election officials who question election results, she’s also invested in Supreme Court races to ensure friendly faces on the bench in the event of a legal challenge.

“I’m very concerned about her donating money, money that she got from California, by the way,” Johnson said, pointing to $82,500 Benson’s Michigan Legacy PAC donated to Supreme Court Justice Kyra Bolden.

Bolden has unsurprisingly sided with Benson in recent critical election cases.

“This is a long term plan on the Democrats side to turn purple states blue, but I think it’s more nefarious than that,” Dixon said, pointing to Democratic priorities in the state legislature in recent years.

Aside from exploding state budgets and billions in corporate welfare, Democrats have made it illegal for county canvassers to investigate voter fraud, and shifted spending to focus on “asylum seekers” and benefits for immigrants.

“In regard to Jocelyn Benson, when we were running 14 years ago, she told one of my friends, ‘I’m running for secretary of state so I’ll have a podium to run for governor,’” Johnson said, noting the state budget went from $57 billion to $82 billion in the last five years. “So you’re right, this has been long term.”

Dixon suggested all of the above appears to be part of a broader pattern Democrats are leveraging to wrest control over states and the country.

Benson “ran on being nonpartisan and I think this is something nationally we need to look at,” she said. “You’ve got these secretaries of state who are running on being nonpartisan and then running their own elections to higher office.

“If you look at Arizona, Katie Hobbs was secretary of state, ran her own election to become governor,” Dixon added. “We know that’s Jocelyn Benson’s plan too. She has made it clear she will run for governor.”

Benson has “been working against our rules, our laws for years … she’s been planning this takeover of the secretary of state’s office for years,” she said.

“This is not the American way,” Dixon said. “This is to get their way, to gain power for their people.”