Homeland Security Chief Says Benson Risked Voter Data
The Secretary of State gives information to election NGOs but says the federal government can't take a look
When the Justice Department asked states for voter rolls, many election overseers—including Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson— stonewalled the feds.
But election officials shared that same data with non-government organizations, and now that sharing could come back to haunt their partners, after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security raised data privacy concerns.
“I told them they can’t have it,” Benson said in Sept. 2025. “I’m required to follow the law. State and federal law include strict privacy protections that keep people’s personal data confidential and keep everyone safe from identity theft.”
That sounds nice, but is at odds with how Benson has handled voter data since taking office in 2019.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security got involved, asking Attorney General Todd Blanche to investigate NGOs who have been sent voter data by the same secretaries of state denying it to the feds.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote:
“Marketed as a voter list maintenance organization, ERIC exposes millions of citizens' sensitive private data to unknown contractors, subcontractors, and agents of ERIC-potentially in violation of the DPPA [Drivers Privacy Protection Act]. In practice, it appears ERIC lobbies states to sign a contract that requires the disclosure of the private data of individuals who were not registered to vote and therefore certainly could not be in need of voter list maintenance. The data fields disclosed include Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers.”
Election officials like Benson are telling two different stories: Driver data and Social Security numbers are sacred and private when the feds come asking, but they will pay ERIC to take this precious data.
In Benson’s first week as Secretary of State, she signed Michigan up for a multi-state voter database called ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center. The arrangement has cost Michigan about $20,000 per year.
The idea of ERIC is that member states can see if they have the same voter registered in both, and figure out among themselves.
But that’s not how things have worked in Michigan, where there are still 400,000 more voters registered than adults in the state.
The personal data Benson says she’s protecting from the feds, including driver’s license data, is shared with ERIC. And ERIC shares it with partner organizations, such as the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR).
ERIC and CEIR share a common founder named David Becker, a longtime ally of Jocelyn Benson.
Benson enrolling Michigan in ERIC created legitimacy and proof of concept for Becker’s voter database. In September 2020, he returned the favor, sending $12 million from CEIR to Benson’s nonprofit, the Michigan Center for Election Law and Administration.
Becker benefited when Benson joined ERIC. Benson benefited from the Beckerbucks, and used the money to fund commercials she starred in.
And in the process, you don’t know who is using your information. Mullin’s letter notes that drivers license data allows ERIC to see who is registered to vote based on the motor vehicle database and the voter registration database.
You might think this would help illegal residents from voting, but ERIC goes out of its way to avoid data involving citizenship status, Mullin writes.
“This problem has direct implications for our efforts to prevent alien voting,” Mullin wrote. He cited how 30,000 noncitizens in Colorado wrongly received invitations to register to vote.
“We have serious concerns about the potential for alien registration across other states,” Mullins wrote.
In Michigan, ERIC identified 700,000 “eligible but unregistered” adults on the eve of the 2020 election, and Benson sent invitations to them to register.
How many were noncitizens? Benson doesn’t know because ERIC doesn’t know. And ERIC doesn’t know because it doesn’t want to know.
