Speaker Pro Tem Rachelle Smit today addressed ongoing court-ordered mediation between the House and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. The mediation was required after Benson continued to refuse lawmaker requests for access to uncontroversial, basic election training information provided to election clerks and stored on the Bureau of Elections (BOE) E-Learning Portal.

“I’m disappointed the court-ordered mediation did not yield a positive result last week,” said Smit, R-Martin. “Secretary Benson continues to withhold the training materials she hands down to clerks. Chair DeBoyer and I were both clerks; we both agree that these documents need to be turned over to the Legislature so we can ensure our elections are being run effectively and in a non-partisan way.”

For nearly a year, Smit has made good faith attempts to review the training materials handed down by Secretary Benson and her department. Smit said her requests were even more important considering the number of rules and guidance, handed down by Secretary Benson, that have been thrown out as illegal.

At every turn, the Michigan Department of State (MDOS) has claimed it could not fulfill Smit’s request, even going so far as to say the request would take 140 man-hours and would cost Smit’s office nearly $9,000. It was only pressure from the House Oversight Committee that led Benson’s office to release a substantial amount of the information requested by Smit, and it only took MDOS about four hours to do it.

However, that document dump did not include key pieces of requested information, specifically the election training materials. So, after exhausting all options, Smit secured action by the House Oversight Committee, which promptly directed Chair Rep. Jay DeBoyer, R-Clay Township, to issue a subpoena ordering Secretary Benson and MDOS to release the remaining information.

Secretary Benson proceeded to illegally defy the subpoena, leading to a lawsuit seeking court backing that the House subpoena is valid and issued for a proper legislative purpose. The lawsuit ultimately led to the court-ordered mediation, which did not yield a positive result.

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