The Republican chair of the Michigan House Oversight Committee has delivered a subpoena calling on Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to turn over materials related to training and managing elections.
The subpoena was authorized last week as Republicans complained the Democratic Secretary of State has refused for months to turn over the entirety of materials related to conducting elections.
“I got to tell you, only the guilty need to feel guilty,” Representative Jay DeBoyer (R-Clay) told Michigan Public Radio. “What is that they’re afraid to provide to us?”
There are, in fact, two subpoenas – one names Benson and the other the Michigan Department of State. But they are otherwise identical. They were transmitted electronically Tuesday via an official portal. The request sets a deadline of 4 p.m. on May 14. The Secretary of State’s office confirmed it had received the documents.
House Republicans and Benson, who is the state’s top election administrator, have been trading jabs for weeks related to materials requested by the House Elections Committee. The Oversight Committee is the only House panel that has subpoena power and so the subpoena had to go through that panel.
The information request is wide-ranging, but DeBoyer focused on training materials.
“What other way are they going to find out if the training that they’re providing to local clerks is in accordance with state election law,” he said. “If the Secretary of State won’t provide the training information, there’s no way to find out if they’re training them according to election law.”
Benson has accused House Republicans of stoking doubt about the security of Michigan elections while GOP leaders say slow-walking their requests does exactly that.
Benson has already provided some of the material and says much of what the committee asked for is sensitive and would compromise election security, so it must be vetted before sharing.
Benson Chief Communications Officer Angela Benander called the announcement “an unnecessary press release about a subpoena that’s also unnecessary.”
“As we’ve communicated multiple times, we are in the process of producing the requested training materials on top of the hundreds of documents we’ve already provided to the committee,” Benander said in an email to Michigan Public Radio. “But we will not provide open access to sensitive information that could jeopardize the security of our elections, and we’re prepared to make this case in court.”
