Sen. Ruth Johnson, R-Holly, is nothing if not persistent in serving as a watchdog over the woman who succeeded her as Michigan’s Secretary of State.

Johnson, who served as Secretary of State from 2011 to 2018, on the eve of the 2024 election called upon Benson to comment on a surge in potential noncitizens registered to vote in the state. According to Johnson, who defeated Benson for the Secretary of State mantle in 2010, the citizenship of nearly 35,000 registered voters in Michigan cannot be verified.

“So far in 2024, there have been 34,535 individuals whose name, date of birth, and Social Security numbers do not match any record found in the Social Security database,” Johnson said. “That is a huge increase from previous years and very alarming to me. Far-left operatives have pushed for changes in our constitution and laws that allow for same-day registration with no ID and our clerks do not have the ability to check or verify citizenship.”

Go Ad-Free, Get Content, Go Premium Today - $1 Trial

Revelations last week that a Chinese national University of Michigan student used same day registration to vote illegally in Ann Arbor raised Johnson’s suspicions, especially after it was revealed that his vote could not be rescinded. In other words, his illegally cast ballot could not be retrieved, and his vote will count in the 2024 election.

The incident prompted Johnson to pen a letter to Benson, seeking information on what processes Benson had implemented “to prevent and detect noncitizens” in Michigan elections. According to Johnson, the Social Security Administration’s Help America Vote Verification system is the commonly used verification process employed by state officials for verification of voter registration qualification. The SSA verifies the name, date of birth, and last four digits of the registrants Social Security number, and notifies the SOS if the information doesn’t match SSA records.

“With Proposal 3 of 2018, Proposal 2 of 2022 and new election laws pushed by the secretary of state and passed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature, so much integrity has been stripped away from our elections,” Johnson said. “We have no system to check if people are registering or voting who are not eligible. The only way the student at UM was caught is because he requested his ballot back from the clerk.”

Since Benson assumed office in 2019, she has made sweeping changes in Michigan’s voting process with the assistance of the Democratic-majority legislature and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Benson was also a leading proponent of Proposal 2.

Go Ad-Free, Get Content, Go Premium Today - $1 Trial

Some of those changes have resulted in legal defeats for Benson, including her guidelines for poll workers in the 2022 election. However, other court challenges against Benson’s efforts to force Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s name to remain and Cornel West’s name to be removed from the November ballot were upheld by the Michigan Supreme Court, after Benson’s PAC donated $82,500 to the reelection campaign of Justice Kyra Bolden.

According to Benson’s Election Officials Manual, distributed earlier this month, clerks are not required to ask for a photo ID as outlined by federal identification requirements from voter registration applicants. “The federal identification requirement does not apply to any person applying to register to vote in person,” Benson’s instructions read.

In the past, according to a news release from Johnson’s office, “the ballot of any individual registering to vote without ID within 14 days of an election or on Election Day was identified as a challenged ballot. This allowed the ballot to be removed from vote totals if it was determined that the voter was ineligible. However, Proposal 2 of 2022 and changes made by the Democratic state Legislature since 2023 require that such ballots now be counted anonymously with other voters’ ballots.”

Johnson has been a diligent watchdog of Benson’s activities as Secretary of State, including pointing out that the state’s voting rolls currently stand at 106.5% of the eligible Michigan voting population. Additionally, Johnson has called Benson the most partisan Secretary of State to have ever held the office in Michigan.

“I worked on a law with the Legislature as secretary of state in 2018 that would have prevented this student’s ballot from counting, but Democrats stripped this law away,” said Johnson. “We should all want free and fair elections. When someone is allowed to vote who is not eligible, that disenfranchises another voter. It is very sad that the current secretary of state seems to be more concerned with partisan advantage than with integrity in our elections.”