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CBS News
4 days ago
- Business
- CBS News
Michigan House sues SOS Jocelyn Benson over access to election training materials
The Republican-controlled Michigan House has filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Jocelyn over access to election training materials used to train clerks and staff on the state's elections. The lawsuit was filed on Thursday in the state Court of Claims after lawmakers said Benson failed to comply with a subpoena issued by GOP Rep. Jay DeBoyer. The House requests the court acknowledge that it submitted a valid subpoena that Benson must comply with and issue an injunction preventing her or the Department of State from modifying records. "Our commitment to bring accountability to Lansing is not just lip service," DeBoyer (R-Clay Township) said in a news release. "After going years without legislative oversight, Benson has clearly grown comfortable operating independent of the other, co-equal branches of government. For months, we have tried to get her cooperation through requests, then accommodating offers, and then legal demands. Her continued defiance now brings us to the courtroom, where we will continue to diligently work to deliver government transparency for the people of Michigan." The Michigan Department of State says it has provided more than 3,300 pages of materials. However, it says the documents requested by lawmakers are "sensitive election information that, in the wrong hands, would compromise the security of our election machines, ballots and officials." The department says Benson asked lawmakers to allow a court to review the request. "Let's be clear - the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee is demanding information that could be used to interrupt the chain of custody of ballots, tamper with election equipment, or impersonate a clerk on Election Day," the department said in a statement. "While we are committed to transparency, we will never compromise our duty to ensure Michigan's elections are safe and secure. We look forward to working with a judge to come to a resolution that will resolve this dispute." According to the lawsuit, the House claims that Benson and the Department of State violated the subpoena by deliberately refusing the request. Benson argued that releasing the confidential documents to the House Oversight Committee would risk sharing them with the public. However, lawmakers disputed that claim in the lawsuit, saying the subpoena is "supported by a valid legislative purpose" and Benson's reasons for not providing the documents are meritless. "Because elections are quickly approaching (with the next election day occurring on November 4, 2025, and primaries occurring even earlier on August 5, 2025) and the term of the 103rd Legislature is limited in duration (ending on January 1, 2027), every day Defendants obstruct access to the subpoenaed election training materials, Defendants undermine the ability of the House to fulfill its constitutional duty to regulate and safeguard the purity of elections," read the lawsuit.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
House Oversight Committee authorizes subpoena for Department of State over training materials
House Oversight Committee Chair Jay DeBoyer (R-Clay Twp.) at an April 15, 2025 committee meeting. | Kyle Davidson Following a lengthy discussion and a vote on the rules governing its subpoena process, members of the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday authorized a subpoena to the Department of State as part of an ongoing request for documents used to train election workers. During a previous meeting of the committee in March, House Election Integrity Committee Chair Rachelle Smit (R-Martin) detailed her frustrations regarding a request she made with the Michigan Department of State in November while serving as the minority vice chair of the House Elections Committee where she requested information used to train election workers. Smit told the committee her office made its first request on Nov. 7, two days after the 2024 election, seeking access to the Bureau of Elections e-learning portal, which provides education and training materials for the state's election clerks. 'In response to my request, we were initially told that we could not access the information, but maybe some exceptions might be made,' Smit said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Smit said she was asked to submit a Freedom of Information Act — or FOIA — request for the information, with the Department of State confirming on Nov. 20 that Smit's office submitted a FOIA asking for 'electronic copies of all training materials offered or otherwise provided to elections clerks.' The department denied the request on Nov. 21 due to a lack of specificity and offered the opportunity to resubmit the request. According to the department, Smit submitted a refined FOIA request on Dec. 10, 2024, with the Bureau of Elections sending a letter on Dec. 18 requesting an extension in fulfilling the request. On Jan 7, 2025 the department sent Smit an estimate of the cost for fulfilling the FOIA request, saying the request would take 140 work hours to fulfill, with an estimate cost of $8,781.75, which Smit called 'ridiculous' saying it was 'obviously designed to deter our office from scrutinizing its elections management.' Nearly a month later, Smit sent a direct request in her capacity as the chair of the Elections Integrity committee, which she said received no response initially. 'Our staff followed up on the request repeatedly, only to be met with obvious sandbagging and delayed efforts. We even have met with representatives from the department and discussed the request. Ultimately, the department promised they would produce some of the request materials, but not all,' Smit told committee members in March. According to the Department of State's timeline, their staff discussed the request with Smit's staff on Feb. 19, seeking clarity on what documents would be most helpful. Smit reiterated her request for all information so as to inform the committee's work On March 4, the department said it verbally informed Smit that its staff was working to compile a response, which they expected to deliver by the end of the week, by Friday, March 7. However, Smit said she'd exhausted all options, and sent a formal request to the Oversight Committee to issue a subpoena to the department to produce the records they had requested. The Oversight Committee posted the notice of its March 11 meeting four days earlier, with the Department of State sending its response to Smit later that afternoon. During the March 11 committee meeting, Smit said the Department 'deliberately and openly withheld documents on the pretense that the clerk's educational materials were too sensitive to disclose to myself,' Smit said, emphasizing her background as a former township clerk and her role as the chair of a legislative committee. Following the meeting, the House Oversight Committee Chair Jay DeBoyer (R-Clay Twp.) sent a letter to the Department of State, giving them 10 business days to provide the remaining documents. The department responded to DeBoyer's letter on March 19, noting that its response to Smit had come about through a combined 42 hours of tax-funded time, costing $3,820.52, producing more than 1,200 pages of documents with more than 300 links to election law references in response to Smit's 'wide-ranging and inexact request for records.' 'Despite this, the Oversight Committee scheduled a hearing and took testimony on the false premise that the department had not adequately responded to Rep. Smit's request,' Michael Brady, the department's chief legal director wrote in the response. 'After MDOS expended a considerable amount of taxpayer funded staff time to provide these records, it was disappointing to see that the chair of the Election Integrity Committee had apparently not thoroughly read our response. In addition to the resources we provided, we indicated that much of the information she sought is publicly available on our website,' Brady continued. While DeBoyer's letter requested login credentials for the e-learning portal, noting that links to several of the pieces of information requested by Smit directed the user to a password-protected website, Brady responded noting that the portal 'contains sensitive training materials regarding the cyber security and physical security of election systems and election machines.' 'This limited access is critical to ensure the ongoing integrity of our election systems and thereby the integrity of our elections. Lest there be any question as to the necessity or wisdom of complying with industry 'need to know' standards in the protection of critical infrastructure and sensitive information, unfortunately, we need look no further than the ongoing criminal prosecution of individuals (including a former state representative from during her time in office) who are alleged to have attempted to gain unauthorized and illegal access to voting machines for their own personal and political purposes,' Brady wrote, referencing former state Rep. Daire Rendon (R-Lake City) who is facing criminal charges for allegedly attempting to access and tamper with voting tabulators following the 2020 election. While the department acknowledged it had withheld some items as they were sensitive or unduly burdensome to produce, Brady explained Smit's request for items from 2016 to 2018 predate the administration of current Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, making it significantly more difficult to locate potentially responsive documents and ensure a complete response. Additionally, the e-learning portal contains more than 500 items in various formats including materials on cyber security and physical security of election machines, Brady said. If these materials were to be released, each item would need to be individually reviewed and redacted, he said. DeBoyer sent another letter on April 4, giving the department until April 14 to provide the documents it had not provided. In its response, the department reiterated the security concerns in providing login credentials to access the training materials, but said it would be happy to provide the materials on a rolling basis following a security review, and planned to produce initial materials on April 30. During the meeting, all nine Republican members in attendance voted to authorize the issuance of the subpoena while six Democratic members voted in opposition. Rep. Reggie Miller (D-Van Buren Twp.), the committee's minority vice chair, passed on her vote. When issued, the subpoenaed parties would include the Michigan Department of State, and/or its relevant officers, employees or agents, including Benson and any records custodian of the Department of State. The subpoena, when issued, requests any documents and information outlined in DeBoyer's letter that have not yet been provided. At this time the authorization is only for a subpoena to seek the production of records. In a statement posted after the vote, Smit said the training materials she requested weren't state secrets, but basic materials regularly provided to election clerks. 'Secretary Benson had five months and ample opportunities to be transparent and work with us to strengthen our election systems. She refused, leaving us with no choice but to issue a subpoena,' Smit said. Angela Benander, Benson's chief communications officer, further emphasized the security concerns that could come with forcing state employees to disclose sensitive information, noting that the department will take all necessary steps to protect the security and integrity of Michigan's elections and is more than willing to make those arguments in court. 'The House Oversight Committee, after rejecting the department's multiple attempts to provide the requested materials in a way that protects the security of our election system, instead voted to issue an unnecessary subpoena for this sensitive information,' Benander said. 'This includes materials that show active screens of the Qualified Voter File; specific information that could be used to compromise the technology used by local election officials; specific procedures for securing voting equipment, ballots, and other election-related materials; information that could be used to gain improper access to secure communication channels used to report security risks; specific locations of election administrator training and templates for official election notices.' 'Unfortunately, the committee has hijacked what was supposed to be a legitimate oversight process. They have made the committee chair — a single individual with no legal background — judge and jury with the power to force state employees to disclose sensitive election security information or face discipline. It's now clear that the plan all along was to weaponize this process and continue to undermine the public's faith in the security and legitimacy of our elections,' Benander said. The Michigan Democratic Party similarly condemned the vote, with party Chair Curtis Hertel slamming House Republicans for granting the oversight committee subpoena power, saying they'd given themself the power to investigate their political opponents. 'This is a gross overstep by the House Oversight Committee, plain and simple. If [Michigan House Speaker Matt] Hall (R-Richland Twp.) 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,' Hertel said, in reference to Hall's refusal to move forward with a package of bills passed by the Senate that would subject the Legislature and the Governor's office to the state's Freedom of Information Act. Hall stood by DeBoyer's decision during a press conference on Tuesday, telling reporters he'd told DeBoyer and the committee to issue subpoenas if departments or administrations are not responding. 'I'm not holding them back, right? We're asking them to go out and do a job, and if that's what they need to do, then I support them 100%,' Hall said.
