Since taking office, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has expanded ways to vote early, despite widespread concerns from Republicans and others about the potential for fraud.

In October, a Chinese national at the University of Michigan cast an illegal ballot that would have went unnoticed by the Secretary of State, had the student not attempted to retrieve his vote.

That vote was counted in the 2024 election, which came with relaxed voting rules championed by Benson and approved by Democrats who controlled both chambers of the Michigan Legislature.

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That’s because the expanded voting provisions did not include any mechanism to detect or remove fraudulent votes, despite solid evidence nearly 35,000 registered Michigan voters were likely ineligible to cast ballots.

“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,” Benson’s predecessor, former Secretary of State Sen. Ruth Johnson, R-Holly, told the New York Post. “That’s a huge increase from previous years and very alarming to me.”

Johnson noted that when she served as the state’s top election official, the number of registered voters without matching records was 54.

“We have no system to check if people are registering or voting who are not eligible,” Johnson said. “The only way the student at UM was caught is because he requested his ballot back from the clerk.”

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Fast forward to January: Chinese UM student Haoxiang Gao, 19, faces up to 15 years in prison for his illegal vote, Michigan Republicans have introduced a constitutional amendment to require voter ID, and Benson is touting her tenure at the SOS in her bid to replace Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2026.

“I know how to make government work – not because I’ve talked or posted about it,” Benson posted to X on Saturday. “But because I have done it every day as Michigan’s Secretary of State.”

The illegal vote in 2024 wasn’t lost on her followers, who sounded off on X about the incident and other mismanagement at the Secretary of State since Benson took the helm.

“You let Chinese nationals vote in our last election,” one user wrote.

“You let illegals vote,” another posted. “Try again.”

“All evidence to the contrary, Jocelyn,” wrote yet another.

Michigan U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar, a Republican who has led the charge against Chinese influence operations in the U.S., previously called on Benson to explain how she will prevent similar illegal votes in the future.

“Secretary Benson must tell us how she will prevent similar election fraud in the next week, and how she will secure our elections against (Chinese Communist Party) interference,” Moolenaar said in a statement shortly before the Nov. 5 election.

That never happened. And there was no accountability for election workers, including Benson, who allowed the Chinese student to vote in 2024.

It’s a similar situation with court rulings that have found election guidance from Benson’s office unconstitutional, and complaints to the State Bar of Michigan’s Attorney Grievance Commission about Benson’s “deceitful” and unethical conduct that have so far went unanswered.

In one of two pending bar complaints, former Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra pointed to $82,500 Benson’s Michigan Legacy PAC donated to Supreme Court Justice Kyra Harris Bolden, among others. The funding from the PAC mostly came from out of state donors in California and beyond, donated amid pending SOS cases with the state’s highest court.

“In the context of consistent rebukes from courts, and with a critical case impacting her power to unilaterally rewrite election rules being actively litigated before the Michigan Supreme Court, Benson made a historically large political campaign contribution to a sitting Michigan Supreme Court Justice,” the complaint read. “That large contribution appears to have been an attempt to influence the Justice’s pending decision.

“And after receiving that large contribution from Benson, the Justice in question wrote an opinion reversing the lower court rulings, thereby disregarding decades of precedent in order to allow Benson to continue her efforts to weaken Michigan Election Laws.”

Throughout it all, Benson has faced no consequence for her illegal election advice, questionable campaign contributions, or other moves that restricted access to Secretary of State offices across the state during the pandemic.

That’s allowed Benson, a former hate crimes investigator for the Southern Poverty Law Center, to forge ahead with her plans to oversee her own election to replace a term-limited Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2026.

That effort is now ramping up with Benson’s online self promotion, a statewide tour of “Community Conversations” promoted through her official channels, and a May book release.

The title: “The Purposeful Warrior, Standing Up For What’s Right When The Stakes Are High.”

“It’s both a firsthand account of what it was like to have a front row seat to a nationally coordinated effort to undo the fair and legitimate results of a Presidential election, and an inspiring roadmap for how we, in these divisive, uncertain times, can channel our fears and frustrations into fighting as warriors on behalf of ourselves and our community,” Benson posted to X last year.