Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is raising the alarm about foreign bad actors who are working to “hack voters’ minds” in the 2024 election, though she provides zero examples.
Benson appeared on CBS News’ Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan on Sunday, when Brennan asked Benson to provide “concrete examples” of foreign interference in Michigan’s 2024 election.
“You have previously said that Michigan, your state, is being targeted by foreign actors who are trying to disrupt the democratic process,” Brennan said. “Have you been given concrete evidence, or examples, by U.S. intelligence about what is happening in your battleground state. Like, what form is it taking?”
Benson didn’t provide any examples, but instead alleged the efforts to sway the election are focused on persuading voters, rather than attacks on election infrastructure.
“We know that because our systems are secure, there are foreign bad actors and adversaries to democracy on the global scale who will seek to potentially not hack our systems, but hack voters’ minds to spread falsehoods and misinformation,” Benson said, “not just to sow seeds of distrust, but to diminish confidence in the process and in their own voices.”
“And you see it amplified now because if there’s enough noise, you can cause people to potentially give up and say, ‘I don’t know what to believe. I’m disengaging altogether,’” she said. “That’s the goal. So we’re seeing efforts to amplify misinformation and are prepared to, again, push back with real information.”
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The comments came the same day Benson engaged in a spat with the world’s richest man on X, where she accused Elon Musk, owner of Space X and X, and CEO of Tesla, of “spreading dangerous misinformation” about the state’s bloated voter rolls.
Musk questioned whether it was true that Michigan’s voter registrations outnumbered the state’s voting age population, prompting a fact-check from Benson that contradicted data from the Secretary of State’s own website.
“There aren’t more voters than citizens in Michigan. There are 7.2 million active registered voters and 7.9 citizens of voting age in our state,” Benson wrote. “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.
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Musk called out Benson for “blatantly lying to the public” and noted the ineligible voter registrations will remain in the system until after the 2024 election, a fact that’s backed by state data.
The Michigan Department of State website identifies 8,441,536 registered voters, with 339,551 slated for cancelation in 2025 and 258,175 in 2027. A Bridge Michigan analysis last week found the 8.4 million registrations outnumber the state’s voting age population by nearly 500,000, the third highest imbalance among states. Republicans initially sued Benson in 2020 over Benson’s failure to maintain the state’s voter rolls, and filed another suit in February on the same issue.
“In 2020, Michigan had one county with registration rates above 100% of the voting age population,” the most recent lawsuit read. “Now it has 53.”
Bridge found at least 11 counties have 120% or more registrations than legal voters.
Michigan’s inflated voter rolls is one of several examples of misinformation from Benson during the 2024 election cycle.
While campaigning for Democrats, the former “hate crimes” attorney for the disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center has also promoted the Trump national abortion ban lie, despite the 45th POTUS repeatedly debunking the claim.
Other misinformation has come in the form of notifications on the Michigan Voter Information website that until recently claimed “there are no elections scheduled at this time,” as well as Benson’s guidance for local election officials that has been repeatedly struck down in the courts.
That guidance has included everything from carrying firearms at polling locations, to instructions on validating absentee voter signatures, to restrictions on poll challengers.
The misinformation is in addition to lawsuits from Republicans targeting other ways Benson, who angling to replace Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2026, is allegedly putting her thumb on the scale in 2024.
Republicans have sued Benson over an agreement with the Biden-Harris administration to leverage Small Business Administration and Veterans Affairs offices she’s used to promote voting in Democratic areas of the state.
It’s the same deal with youth voter outreach, with Benson hosting events in Lansing, Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Marquette, Traverse City, Highland Park, and Battle Creek – all areas that voted overwhelmingly for President Joe Biden in 2020.
At the same time, Benson has implored the media to help Democrats “prebunk” election misinformation and to “protect the minds of voters” as she promotes her office as the Ministry of Truth, encouraging Michiganders to report neighbors who post misleading information online.
There’s also Benson’s efforts to implement a ban on election officials investigating voter fraud now that doesn’t take effect until 2025, threats to election officials who don’t automatically certify election results, and campaign contributions to Michigan Supreme Court Justice Kyra Bolden, who played a key role in decisions impacting Benson’s office and third-party candidates on the ballot.
“Jocelyn Benson has turned the office of secretary of state into a full-blown Democratic operation, shamelessly using her position as Michigan’s chief elections officer to campaign for herself and Kamala Harris – and to manipulate the state’s ballot to favor Democrats in the presidential election and beyond,” The Detroit news Assistant Editorial Page Editor Kaitlyn Buss wrote in a recent column.
“Benson spoke at a Women for Harris event … blatantly campaigning for the vice president. And she has eroded trust in the voting system by continuously stigmatizing Republicans and others who question Michigan’s rapidly evolving election process.”