Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson testifies evidence of mail-in voter fraud is ‘infinitesimal in Michigan’

[xotrevor]

Jun. 04, 2020

LANSING, MI — Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson on Wednesday, June 3, testified remotely before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties on protecting voting rights during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During her testimony, Benson spoke of the constitutional amendment Michigan voters passed in November 2018, which granted every voter the right to vote by mail, and said evidence of mail-in voter fraud is “infinitesimal in Michigan and many other states.”

The hearing comes a couple weeks after Benson announced that all registered Michigan voters may vote by mail in the upcoming August and November elections. Registered voters will receive absentee ballot applications by mail for submission to their local clerks. The application is also available online to download at Michigan.gov/Vote.

President Donald Trump responded to Benson’s announcement by issuing tweets threatening to withhold funding from the state and raising concerns about voter fraud.

“As we collectively endure this moment of great uncertainty, caused by a global pandemic that has taken the lives of 100,000 Americans and many more worldwide, it is within both my authority and my responsibility as Michigan’s chief election officer to ensure every voter knows that they do not need to risk their health to cast a ballot,” Benson said.

“This year, perhaps more than any other, Americans will be inundated by efforts to confuse them — about the election process, their rights, the issues at stake, and whether the elections will be held at all,” she continued.

“These efforts — foreign, domestic, partisan or simply malicious — are designed to foster mistrust in our elections process, depress turnout and erode confidence in the election results and the sanctity of our democracy. We need cannot let misinformation sow seeds of doubt in our elections. Facts must prevail over fear.”

Here are some of the questions committee members asked Benson Wednesday and her responses:

Chairman U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tennessee, said Trump falsely accused Benson of illegally sending millions of mail-in ballots to Michigan voters. He asked her to explain what Michigan actually did and whether, in her opinion, this is a partisan issue.

“Thank you for the question and the opportunity to, again, restate and clarify exactly what we did in Michigan. One, we feel that educating voters about their choices and rights in the midst of this pandemic is exactly the job of secretaries of state, chief election officers, right now. What I did in Michigan, as several of my colleagues in West Virginia and Iowa and Nebraska and Georgia have also done, is simply mail an application to every registered voter for them to request to vote by mail and receive a ballot through the mail in August, in our August primary, and in our November election,” Benson said.

This is something Michigan voters specifically called for in 2018, Benson said, when they voted to amend the state’s constitution to ensure every citizen’s right to vote by mail.

“In my view, this is not nearly a partisan issue, it certainly shouldn’t be one. It’s a responsibility and authority that secretaries of state have to educate and inform citizens about their rights, particularly in this time of great uncertainty.”

Benson said there’s also a lot of misinformation about what happens when voters receive such an application in the mail, which is different from a ballot.

“An application simply enables the voter to affirmatively request that they’d like to vote by mail and confirm their identity when they do so. It actually enables us to clarify and clean our list in a way that ensures we’re accurately delivering the vote by mail to our citizens who are rightfully registered to vote and addressing issues as they may arise,” such as removing recently deceased voters from the list, thereby improving the integrity and accuracy of the election system.

Cohen also asked about the possibility of delays with the U.S. Postal Service and what happens if a voter does not receive their ballot on time.

“If, for whatever reason, you haven’t received or have just chosen not to return your ballot prior to the election, you will always have in Michigan the option to show up in person, surrender your ballot, if you have it,” and vote in person, Benson said.

U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, asked Benson about voter fraud and what Michigan is doing to ensure mail-in ballots are legitimate.

“The term ‘ballot harvesting’ does not appear in Michigan law, but, you know, the question is about whether a person can drop off another person’s ballot. There are really only limited circumstances in which that is allowed and generally only by an immediate family member, someone who the voter shares a home with. But, importantly, the signature check is, on multiple levels, a confirmation that the only person voting a ballot, returning a ballot, is the voter themselves. …The signature check takes place both when the application is returned and the voter requests the ballot to be sent to them. That signature on that application is matched to their voter registration signature. And then, secondly, when the ballot is ultimately returned, the voter must sign the outside of the envelope and that signature is then matched to all the other signatures that we have on file.”

She noted that checking signatures is a “time-tested method that has been in place in states for decades to ensure that people returning ballots are the voters themselves.”

“Evidence of fraud is infinitesimal in Michigan and in many other states, some that have been doing vote-by-mail for decades and others around the country,” she said. “In rare times when it does occur, we catch it and we prosecute it.”

Nadler also asked about U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s concerns about foreign governments sending fake mail-in ballots to manipulate our elections. Does it seem plausible that a foreign government could mail in counterfeit ballots in Michigan?

“No, it does not. And, to me, that more strikes to what is a bigger issue facing our elections and our electorate this year, which is the effort to sow seeds of doubt in the integrity of the process and, in that way, harm voters’ confidence in the elections and in their results," Benson said. "That effort to push back against misinformation, false information, about our elections process is our most important effort we ought to be engaged in across party lines.”

U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pennsylvania, asked Benson in what areas of election administration in Michigan has she felt a lack of resources.

“It’s hard to adapt a system that previously was primarily in-person to a system that is predominately voting by mail, quickly. Now, we were able to do that in Michigan,” she said, pointing to the voter-approved constitutional amendment passed in November 2018, which granted every voter in Michigan the right to vote by mail.

“So, like many other states, we saw a significant influx in our March 10 presidential primary and are anticipating another influx in the fall of people voting by mail. But the benefit that we and Pennsylvania and other states have is that states like Colorado, Washington, as was mentioned earlier, Oregon, and even to a certain extent California, have been doing this work, have been allowing vote-by-mail, robust systems in their states for decades. And so we have an opportunity to learn both from their mistakes and their best practices and, with appropriate resources, import a lot of the systems they’ve developed, the technology that they use.”

Dean also asked what are some of the challenges related to voting access in communities of color or economically disadvantaged communities, such as Detroit and Flint?

“The difficulties are both expounded by inequality and access to resources but also historical disenfranchisement, historical disconnect and lack of responsiveness from the government officials and systems that are meant to serve and protect these residents and so we’re fighting decades, generations, of trauma and, as we’re seeing across this country now, the need to effectively do more to better serve communicates of color and historically marginalized and disenfranchised communities also is underscored at the ballot box. And it’s why this has been at the heart of my work and so many others in the voting rights arena. Recognizing that has been mentioned in many different ways today, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to ensuring every vote is counted and every voice is heard. It takes every one of us working together at the local level at the state level, community leaders, other voices, trusted voices, to educate voters about their rights and to ensure they know the choices. It takes election officials, administrators, preparing an infrastructure that can embrace and serve, meeting voters where they’re at.”

Read a full copy of Benson’s testimony here: https://url.americanpatriotsforum.com/k60Q6f

Watch a recording of the hearing here: https://url.americanpatriotsforum.com/ozPKuj

Link: https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2 ... higan.html