Jocelyn Benson: Professional Extremist

Joce­lyn Ben­son is, like many Demo­c­rat politi­cians, a life­long par­ti­san polit­i­cal oper­a­tive with no expe­ri­ence in any real-world job set­ting. She went direct­ly from being a left-wing activist in col­lege to work­ing for the largest hate group in the Unit­ed States, the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter.

Ben­son at the SPLC

The SPLC, more accu­rate­ly dubbed the South­ern Pover­ty Libel Cen­ter, describes itself as a “non­prof­it civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion” ded­i­cat­ed to “track­ing and expos­ing” the activ­i­ties of “hate groups and oth­er domes­tic extrem­ists” through­out the Unit­ed States, and it peri­od­i­cal­ly pub­lish­es updat­ed lists of these enti­ties on its web­site. 

In real­i­ty, the SPLC rou­tine­ly labels and smears all sorts of con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions as “hate groups,” which is its actu­al pur­pose.

 SPLC senior fel­low Mark Potok actu­al­ly acknowl­edged this him­self when he stat­ed that his organization’s black­lists have “noth­ing to do with crim­i­nal­i­ty or vio­lence or any kind of guess we’re mak­ing about ‘this group could be dan­ger­ous.’ It’s strict­ly ide­o­log­i­cal.”

The SPLC also lists gen­uine hate groups on its web­site, but for the sole pur­pose of attack­ing legit­i­mate orga­ni­za­tions by their asso­ci­a­tion. The SPLC also serves as a laun­der­ing ser­vice for these attacks, allow­ing the mass media, and oth­er Demo­c­rat orga­ni­za­tions, to repeat their smears.

In addi­tion to tar­get­ing par­tic­u­lar con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions, the SPLC’s spreads the false notion that Amer­i­ca is a hive of racism and hatred, rais­ing the tem­per­a­ture and cre­at­ing an atmos­phere of fear and loathing that they exploit for their own polit­i­cal pur­pos­es.

Joce­lyn Ben­son’s affil­i­a­tion with the SPLC pre­dates her enroll­ment in law school as a “jour­nal­ist” for the activist orga­ni­za­tion, and Ben­son’s affil­i­a­tion con­tin­ued up to – and indeed, into – her term in office as Michi­gan’s Sec­re­tary of State, by which time she had become a board mem­ber of the orga­ni­za­tion.

Ben­son a Sec­re­tary of State

Ben­son’s career in gov­ern­ment began, fit­ting­ly enough, with an ethics vio­la­tion: she remained on the board of the SPLC – at least two months into her term. Her list­ing as an SPLC board mem­ber was tak­en down on or about March 25, 2019 more than two months into her term (source).

As Sec­re­tary of State, Ben­son pur­sued a sin­gu­lar goal through­out her term of office: facil­i­tat­ing elec­tion fraud.

Besides lob­by­ing for any and all poli­cies that ben­e­fit Democ­rats at the polls (legal­ly or ille­gal­ly), Ben­son con­stant­ly stretched the law beyond its lim­it.

Key efforts by Ben­son includ­ed:

• Flood­ing the vot­er rolls with invalid and expired vot­ers
• Ignor­ing legal require­ments that sig­na­tures on absen­tee bal­lots be ver­i­fied
• Imped­ing poll chal­lengers by abus­ing Covid rules and oth­er means
• Advo­cat­ing for poli­cies that remove safe­guards against elec­tion fraud

Ocot­ber 2023: “Joce­lyn Ben­son los­es in court for third time over her vot­ing rules”

The Michi­gan Court of Appeals last week [Octo­ber 2023] ruled that Sec­re­tary of State Joce­lyn Ben­son exceed­ed her author­i­ty last year when she put new restric­tions on poll chal­lengers, the third time courts have rebuffed the Demo­c­rat for cre­at­ing rules with­out going through the prop­er process.

The pan­el of three judges on Thurs­day upheld a low­er court rul­ing from a year ago in a case brought by Repub­li­cans, find­ing that the Michi­gan Depart­ment of State “must fol­low the require­ments of the Michi­gan Admin­is­tra­tive Pro­ce­dure Act and that under the state law a depart­ment can set new rules only after it has gone through the pub­lic notice and com­ment process.”

[…]

In Octo­ber 2020, the Court of Claims dealt Ben­son a defeat when she attempt­ed to ban open car­ry of guns at polling places and found she had not fol­lowed the Admin­is­tra­tive Pro­ce­dures Act. The Court of Appeals imme­di­ate­ly upheld that deci­sion.

In anoth­er case five months lat­er, the Court of Claims ruled against Ben­son, say­ing she did not take the cor­rect pro­ce­dur­al steps when instruct­ing clerks to assume that absen­tee bal­lots sig­na­tures were accu­rate.

June 2024: “Michi­gan judge rejects Benson’s guid­ance on absen­tee bal­lot sig­na­tures”

Even a Whit­mer-appoint­ed judge could­n’t con­done Ben­son’s abus­es:

A Michi­gan judge on Thurs­day struck down a key part of guid­ance sent to local elec­tion offi­cials by Michi­gan Sec­re­tary of State Joce­lyn Benson’s office. 

The law­suit was filed by the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee (RNC) March 28 in the Court of Claims against Ben­son, a Demo­c­rat, claim­ing the 2023 guid­ance, specif­i­cal­ly that clerks should ini­tial­ly pre­sume the valid­i­ty of absen­tee bal­lot sig­na­tures, was issued  “covert­ly” and was “incon­sis­tent” with Michigan’s  con­sti­tu­tion.

The opin­ion issued by Judge Christo­pher P. Yates, who was appoint­ed by Gov. Gretchen Whit­mer, agreed on that par­tic­u­lar point, find­ing that a pre­sump­tion of valid­i­ty was “incom­pat­i­ble” with Michigan’s con­sti­tu­tion, despite assur­ances from Benson’s office that even though the word “pre­sump­tion” was in the guid­ance, it didn’t demand elec­tion offi­cials con­clude it was a require­ment.

Ben­son forces RFK, Jr. to appear on the bal­lot despite drop­ping out of the race

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had dropped out of the 2024 pres­i­den­tial race before bal­lots had been print­ed in Michi­gan, and so the Michi­gan Court of Appeals ordered him removed from the bal­lot. Assum­ing that his appear­ance on the bal­lot would ben­e­fit Kamala Har­ris, Joce­lyn Ben­son appealed to the par­ti­san Michi­gan Supreme Court, where Democ­rats in the major­i­ty vot­ed 4–3 to over­turn the Court of Appeals and keep Kennedy on the bal­lot.

For­tu­nate­ly, Pres­i­dent Trump won the gen­er­al elec­tion in Michi­gan any­way in a deci­sive vic­to­ry.

Oh yeah — vehi­cles

The Sec­re­tary of State isn’t just the elec­tions admin­is­tra­tor; Ben­son is also in charge of admin­is­ter­ing the Sec­re­tary of State offices across Michi­gan where we get our licens­es and reg­is­tra­tions.

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Ben­son sim­ply shut down the ser­vices alto­geth­er, for months. Appar­ent­ly dri­ving cars isn’t impor­tant in Whit­mer and Ben­son’s Michi­gan!

The Bot­tom Line

Joce­lyn Ben­son is a life­long polit­i­cal hack who has nev­er worked a real job and has no clue what ordi­nary Michi­gan­ders go through – nor does she know any­thing about eco­nom­ics, edu­ca­tion, trans­porta­tion, health care, or any of the pub­lic pol­i­cy issues that affect our State.

If elect­ed, she would join Gretchen Whit­mer and Jen­nifer Granhom as clue­less exec­u­tives dri­ving Michi­gan to the bot­tom of state rank­ings.