Michigan House Oversight Committee demands election training materials from Benson
The Michigan House Republicans made that announcement Tuesday, citing a vote of the committee and its efforts over the past five months to access the materials. State Rep. Jay DeBoyer, R-Clay Township, who chairs the oversight committee, is now authorized to pursue the subpoena.
DeBoyer had insisted that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's office meet an April 14 deadline to provide the requested documents.
Leading up to this step, Rep. Rachelle Smit, R-Shelbyville, who chairs the House Election Integrity Committee, testified before the Oversight Committee on March 11 regarding issues she had faced while seeking election-related materials from the Secretary of State, the press release said. The
list of requested items
and the applicable years is on the oversight committee's website.
In response to her report, DeBoyer sent a letter requesting the missing materials.
After a dispute with the Secretary of State's office over training materials for Michigan clerks and their staff, including what information could be considered confidential, DeBoyer invoked a 10-day deadline on April 4 to fulfill Smit's request.
That is the deadline that has now passed.
"The people and their elected representatives should not be kept in the dark on these matters, and today's move to approve a subpoena will help correct that," DeBoyer said.
The Michigan Democratic Party disputes whether subpoena power is appropriate in this case, according to a statement from Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel.
"Under (House Speaker) Matt Hall, State House Republicans gave themselves unprecedented power to investigate political opponents with this new sweeping subpoena power," Hertel's statement said. "This is a gross overstep by the House Oversight Committee, plain and simple. If Hall really cared about transparency, he would've sent FOIA reform to Governor Whitmer for signature, but we all know that this is really about political persecution, not good government."
CBS News Detroit has reached out to Benson's office for comment.
Benson is term-limited in her current role and
has announced
she is running for governor in 2026.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
25 minutes ago
- New York Post
Democratic governors face a school-choice reckoning: Kids or unions?
Republicans in Congress achieved a historic breakthrough last month — and Democratic governors should jump at the chance to take advantage of it. It's the first-ever nationwide school choice program, included as part of President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The program aims to give every child in America a shot at a better future by funding private- and parochial-school scholarships through a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit. Advertisement But each state's governor has to choose to join it — and nowhere is the need more urgent than in New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul has a golden opportunity to make good on her own words. In 2022, in her gubernatorial debate with GOP nominee Lee Zeldin, Hochul said she supported lifting New York's charter school cap. But in the years since, she's let the leftist state Legislature handcuff charter expansion, leaving too many poor kids stuck in a one-size-fits-all government school monopoly that's failing them spectacularly. Advertisement Empire State families are demanding more choices to escape from failing district schools. Tens of thousands of kids are on charter-school waitlists in New York City — and 78% of New York parents support Education Savings Accounts like the school choice initiative passed by Congress. New York spent about $37,000 per student in 2023 — 66% higher than the state's average private-school tuition — yet only 13% of NYC's black 8th graders are proficient in math. Statewide, inflation-adjusted per-student spending has skyrocketed 209% since 1970. Have outcomes gotten 209% better? Advertisement Of course not: Test scores have stagnated or declined, proving that throwing more money at the problem without competition is a fool's errand. But now Hochul can't blame the Democrat-controlled state Legislature as an excuse to keep poor kids from accessing better schools, whether charter, private or religious. The new federal school-choice program puts the decision squarely in her hands, and in the hands of her fellow governors. Advertisement Other states' Democratic leaders are showing signs of cracking under the pressure of common sense. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's team has said he's considering opting in to the federal program. Even more encouraging is North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, who vetoed a bill passed by the state's GOP-controlled legislature demanding he sign on to the program — calling the bill 'unnecessary,' since he 'intend[s] to opt North Carolina in.' Stein's veto message explicitly stated that 'school choice is good for students and parents,' and pledged to allow North Carolina's public-school students access to the funding. Stein's stance could encourage other Democratic governors to jump on the bandwagon. Speaking of which, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom should opt in, too. He sent his own kids to private school, and attended one himself in his early years. It's hypocritical to oppose school choice for other families while enjoying it for your own. Advertisement What makes the new federal program so compelling — even for Democratic governors beholden to teachers' unions — is a built-in incentive that's impossible to ignore. If states don't opt in, their constituents — whether they know it or not — will be subsidizing scholarships for families in the red states that are already rushing to sign on. All American families and taxpaying individuals can donate to K-12 scholarship-granting organizations and receive a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit in exchange, even if their state doesn't join up. Advertisement All the governors can decide is whether kids in their state can access those scholarships. Opting out means shooting your state in the foot: Your taxpayers' donations will flow to other states' kids, leaving your own students behind. The ongoing crisis in our schools amplifies the urgency. Last week a new FBI report revealed 1.3 million crimes committed at schools from 2020 to 2024, including about 540,000 physical assaults. Advertisement The statistics prove what parents already know: Too many kids are getting beaten, bullied and traumatized in environments that should be safe havens for learning. Democratic governors can no longer do the bidding of teachers' unions by locking children in failing schools infested with violence. The unions' iron grip has protected mediocrity and danger for too long. School choice breaks that stranglehold, giving parents the power to vote with their feet and demand better. Trump's bill puts children first and champions freedom, opportunity and accountability in education. Advertisement It's time for Hochul and her peers to free our kids from the public school monopoly by helping families find better education opportunities. If she doesn't, she risks cementing a legacy of statewide failure and decline. Corey DeAngelis is a senior fellow at the American Culture Project and a visiting fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research.
Yahoo
32 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump wants to get rid of mail-in voting. It's become an increasingly important part of American elections.
More and more voters, including Republicans, have been opting to cast their ballots through the mail. President Trump on Monday said he would lead a movement to get rid of mail-in voting, based on the false claim that they lead to widespread fraud. 'ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING,' he wrote in a post on Truth Social in which he also railed against voting machines used across the country. Trump wrote that he would be signing an executive order to 'to help bring HONESTY' to next year's midterm elections, but didn't share any details on what that order might include or what legal authority he would rely on to issue it. The Constitution gives states the power to control their own elections within the confines of laws set out by Congress. The president does not have the ability to unilaterally change voting laws. Trump has a long history of opposition to mail-in voting, also known as absentee voting. False claims about mail ballots being rife with fraud are central to his unfounded belief that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him. 'We gotta stop mail-in voting and the Republicans have to lead the charge,' Trump told reporters at the White House Monday. 'If you [end] mail in voting, you're not gonna have many Democrats get elected.' It is true that Democrats voted by mail in much larger numbers than Republicans during the 2020 election, but that discrepancy was largely attributable to the unique circumstances of the COVID pandemic, along with Trump's persistent criticism of the practice in the months before Election Day. Historically, mail ballots have not given either party a strong partisan advantage. The GOP also closed, or in some states even flipped, the mail-in voting gap during last year's presidential race. Trump's renewed focus on mail-in voting seemed to come after his conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their summit in Alaska last week to discuss a potential end to the war in Ukraine. 'Vladimir Putin, smart guy, said you can't have an honest election with mail-in voting,' he told Fox News host Sean Hannity in his first interview after the summit. During the Fox News interview, he also falsely claimed that the U.S. is 'the only country in the world' that allows mail-in voting because it's so rife with fraud. In fact, dozens of countries permit at least some voters to cast their ballots through the mail. Growing importance There has been limited use of absentee ballots since the earliest days of the United States, but the practice has become much more common in recent decades. The share of ballots cast by mail during presidential election years doubled between 2000 and 2016, reaching 21% during Trump's first successful presidential run, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Four years later, concerns about COVID infection and more permissive absentee ballot rules caused the use of mail-in voting to spike dramatically. More than 40% of ballots cast in the 2020 race were sent through the mail. Mail-in voting declined to 29% of all ballots last year, but that was still well above any previous non-pandemic year on record. Every state allows mail-in voting to a certain extent, but access to absentee ballots varies a lot. Some states require anyone who wants to vote by mail to provide a valid excuse for why they're unable to cast their ballot in person. About two dozen states allow anyone to apply for a mail-in ballot without providing a reason. A handful of states conduct what are known as 'all-mail' elections, where people can still vote in person if they choose, but ballots are automatically sent to all registered voters. States can also have very different rules for when absentee ballots must be requested, when they must be received and when they can be counted. Fraud in American elections is exceedingly rare, regardless of how votes are cast. Experts have found that mail-in ballots do have a slightly elevated rate of fraud compared to in-person voting, but the overall numbers are far too low to have had a meaningful effect on any election, let alone a presidential race in which more than 150 million ballots are cast. A database of known electoral fraud incidents compiled by the staunchly conservative Heritage Foundation found just 378 cases of mail-in voting fraud in the U.S. since 1982, a time period in which more than 1.2 billion votes were cast in presidential elections alone. GOP attitudes shifting Trump's opinion of mail-in voting hasn't changed, but that's not the case with members of his party. Republican voters have almost completely flipped their views on the practice over the past few years. Less than one in five GOP voters said they were confident that mail-in ballots were counted accurately in the wake of Trump's loss in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. After his victory last year, however, 72% of Republicans said they had faith that mail-in votes were fairly counted. Confidence among Democrats also shifted, dropping from 95% in 2020 to 78% last year. It remains to be seen what will happen to public opinion in the wake of Trump's new attacks on mail-in voting. It's also unclear how much, if at all, he might be able to limit access to absentee ballots through executive action. Any steps he does attempt to take will likely face an immediate legal challenge.
CBS News
an hour ago
- CBS News
Keller: Should Massachusetts state workers be able to work from home?
The opinions expressed below are Jon Keller's, not those of WBZ, CBS News or Paramount Global. It's a legacy of the pandemic: thousands of Massachusetts state employees working remotely, at least part of the time. But is it preventing businesses and taxpayers from getting what they need from the state? It's time to return to the office, Tim Murray, the Massachusetts's former lieutenant governor who is now CEO of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce, claims in an op-ed for the Worcester Telegram and an interview with WBZ-TV. "It's kind of a head-scratcher, I think, to me and to many others," Murray said, citing complaints about unresponsive state agencies from a health-care company seeking help processing a compliance review, a contractor looking for sign-offs on project permits but unable to get a return phone call or email, and a citizen trying unsuccessfully to communicate with the Department of Children and Families. "Common sense shows me that having people in the offices where they can readily and quickly get in touch with one another, huddle when decisions need to be made, is the way that we can best serve taxpayers," said Murray. The vast majority of American workers are back in the office at least part of the time since the work-from-home boom of the pandemic era. But Massachusetts state employees? Not so much. Both former Governor Charlie Baker and current Governor Maura Healey chose to enshrine remote work in state policy - not contractually but in memoranda of understanding, a decision Murray claims has gummed up the works at a moment when efficient state government is needed most. Meanwhile, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered all state employees back to the office in March. But just a few months after that ultimatum, he backed down in the face of backlash from unions and a state study that found remote work had improved service. It was a similar story in California, where Governor Gavin Newsom traded some return-to-the-office demands for union wage concessions. Did Massachusetts give away similar leverage to state-worker unions? "Certainly, that could be argued when so many others, including the teachers, are back to work," said Murray. Not true, said Theresa McGoldrick, of the National Association of Government Employees, a union representing 12,000 state workers. She said more than half her members do at least some remote work, adding, "telework saves money for the Commonwealth." And in a statement to WBZ-TV, a spokesperson for Healey said the administration "values in-person work" and that the majority of state employees do come into the office.
