Do we like Jocelyn Benson?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent record on people and the planet, with a few court losses over how she made election rules and a fight with her critics that is still partisan noise.
Benson is a lawyer's lawyer. She went through Wellesley, Oxford and Harvard Law, wrote a book on what secretaries of state actually do, and ran Wayne State University Law School before heading up the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality. She lost her first run for Secretary of State in 2010 to Ruth Johnson, then won the job in 2018.
Her first term turned into a national stoush because she ran Michigan's 2020 election, which Trump supporters claimed was stolen; she has said it was the most secure in state history. She mailed absentee ballot applications to every registered voter with federal money, Republicans objected, and a court upheld it. Bridge Michigan counts five lawsuits lost and 57 won, and rated the claim that she ignored the law only partly accurate, since judges did rule she skipped proper rule-making steps on open carry at polls and on signature guidance.
Since then the fight has been with the Trump administration and state Republicans. In November 2025, 22 Michigan Republicans asked the Justice Department to oversee the 2026 elections, alleging she had a conflict of interest as a candidate overseeing her own race; her spokesperson said the lawmakers were pouring gasoline on democracy. When the DOJ sued for the state's unredacted voter list, a federal judge threw the suit out in February 2026, and Benson called it “a victory for the citizens of Michigan and the rule of law.” Michigan House Republicans had also voted in May 2025 to hold her in contempt over a subpoena for election training material, and she said she'd see them in court.
On the harm check, the record is clean as far as I could find. In 2019 she announced a policy letting trans and nonbinary people update the gender on their driver's licences. Her environmental platform pushes renewable energy, water protection and enforceable standards for utilities and data centres, and she took the pledge not to accept utility campaign money. Critics online argue she is soft on trans athletes in women's sport, but that is opinion; I found no words from her on it.
The bigger gap is that she hasn't governed yet. Her pitch is lowering costs, raising wages, expanding health care and protecting reproductive rights alongside running mate Winnie Brinks. On election night she called the result a “win for our young girls”, noting two women will lead the state.
The real good stuff is mostly competence. She promised branch-office waits of 30 minutes or less, moved to appointments and reported typical visits under 20 minutes, and lifted online and self-service transactions from 28 per cent to 60 per cent. The appointment-only system annoyed some drivers on both sides of politics, which is fair.