Michigan lawmakers are poised to empower Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson—a Democrat who has faced six separate court orders to enforce election laws—to have more control over elections.

A package of four bills dubbed the Michigan Voting Rights Act cleared the Democrat-controlled state Senate and awaits action by the Democrat-controlled state House of Representatives.

Critics say the legislation would strip the state Legislature and Michigan’s local governments of authority to regulate voting.

“They are systematically moving power away from local election clerks—who are not partisan but are hard workers—and up to the state,” state Sen. Ruth Johnson, a Republican and former Michigan secretary of state, told The Daily Signal.

Under Benson, the state voter registration rolls have 106% of the voting-age population of Michigan, Johnson said, arguing that Benson is an “operative for the far Left.”

“She is the most partisan secretary of state in my lifetime,” Johnson said. “I prided myself on bringing both sides to the table in overseeing elections.”

Michigan—which Republican Donald Trump won in the 2016 election and Democrat Joe Biden won in the 2020 election—is one of the most hotly contested and closely watched states in the 2024 presidential race.

Benson formerly worked for the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center as well as the Democratic National Committee. She was the founder of an activist group called the Michigan Center for Election Law and Administration.

Pure Integrity Michigan Elections, an elections watchdog group, points to six occasions over the past four years in which state and federal courts ruled against Benson in election law cases:

—In July, in the case of Republican National Committee v. Benson, Michigan Court of Claims Judge Christopher Yates ruled against the secretary of state’s policy of presuming voters’ signatures were valid. The RNC........

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