Jocelyn Benson, our Secretary of State, says she’s safeguarding Michigan’s voter data from the federal government. But this argument falls apart like old papyrus.
She says the privacy demands she not hand over your Social Security Number. But voter records operate on four-digit Social Security Numbers, not the nine-digit full number.
Given that the feds issue Social Security Numbers, it’s safe to say they have mine, yours, and ours.
So that’s not it.
Benson says she’s protecting your driver’s license number. But driver’s license data is included in the voter rolls Benson sends to non-government organizations such as ERIC—the Electronic Registration Information Center—and Rock the Vote. Any Democrat operative in America who wants that data has access to it, and it’s our data guardian who granted that access.
So that’s not it.
Jocelyn Benson is not protecting your Social Security Number from the feds. She’s protecting herself, after not requiring a valid Social from people who register to vote.
According to the Help America Vote Verification system, Michigan registered about 100,000 people to vote last year. Of that, 36%—36,000 people—had invalid four-digit Social Security Numbers.
When Benson enrolled Michigan in ERIC, the theory was that ERIC would help her cull our voter rolls by identifying people registered in other states.
That hasn’t happened. Instead, Michigan has 500,000 more voters registered than it has voting-age adults.
It’s unclear what, if any, benefit Michigan gets from paying $20,000 per year to send our voter data to ERIC.
But Benson benefits plenty from the arrangement. In 2020, ERIC founder David Becker gave $12 million to Benson’s non-profit through another NGO, the Center for Election Innovation and Research. Becker founded both ERIC and CEIR and still leads the latter.
Two of three Republican candidates for Secretary of State—Amanda Grove Love and Monica Yatooma—have vowed to pull Michigan out of ERIC, if elected.
Benson has been sued many times for carrying a bloated voter roll but has refused to trim it in a real way. She insists on the bloat.
So if it’s not the Social Security Number that Benson is protecting, and it’s not your driver’s license data, what exactly is Benson hiding from the feds? The scale of potential voter fraud in Michigan, a swing state that matters in just about every presidential election.
How many non-citizens are on the voter rolls? How many dead people? How many people who moved away, whose names appear in other states on the ERIC voter rolls she has access to? Benson doesn’t want those numbers to get out.
It’s one thing if dissident media says it. It’s quite another if Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon says it.
Jocelyn Benson is not protecting your data from Washington. She’s protecting her data from scrutiny.
James David Dickson is an enjoyer of Michigan, and host of “The Thing Behind the Thing” podcast. Join him in conversation on X at @downi75.
