How the 2020 election is still shaping the battle for Michigan’s top elections officer

During her 2018 campaign for secretary of state, it was frequently pointed out in stump speeches that Democrat Jocelyn Benson “literally wrote the book about being a secretary of state.”

Benson’s book, “State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process,” was published in 2010 and elevated her as one of the foremost experts on the position.

That same year, Benson ran for the position she has long had her eye on, losing to Republican Ruth Johnson, who would go on to serve two terms and is now a state senator.

Once Johnson was term-limited out of the position in 2018, however, Benson made another run for the position, and won — making her Michigan’s secretary of state during what she called “a unique moment in our democracy” of attacks on our electoral process and a once in a lifetime pandemic upending branch office operations.

After polls had closed the night of Nov. 3, 2020, Benson held an Election Day press conference at Ford Field in Detroit.

She had spent nearly a full year warning that Michigan could be among the last states in the nation to report their election results in 2020 due to an influx in absentee ballots after voters legalized no-reason early voting in 2018 — and that was before the pandemic.

Benson emphasized at the time that her office stood ready to combat disinformation about the election results, including if any candidates tried to declare victory...

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