Michigan Secretary Of State Jocelyn Benson Defeats GOP Election Denier

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson defeated the GOP conspiracy theorist in her projected win for a second term as the state’s top elections official.

The Associated Press called the race for Benson on Wednesday morning. She held a 55%-42% lead with more than 87% of votes cast.

Benson oversaw the 2020 election that former U.S. President Donald Trump lost and defended the state from Trump’s lies that widespread fraud had marred the result. Her opponent, Kristina Karamo, rose to prominence by spreading those lies: Shortly after Trump’s defeat, she claimed to have witnessed fraud at an absentee ballot processing center in Detroit.

The assertions were baseless but forced Benson and Michigan officials to wage a public campaign to reassure voters that the elections had been conducted fairly. Her victory will ensure that Karamo, one of nearly 300 election deniers running for offices nationwide on Tuesday, will not hold the state’s top elections office during the 2024 presidential contest , when Trump may be on the ballot again.

Benson’s victory added to the list of defeats for GOP election deniers in battleground secretary of state races. Democrats in Minnesota and New Mexico are projected to defeat Republican candidates who spread lies about the 2020 election. Secretary of state races in Nevada and Arizona, where GOP election deniers were also on the ballot, were too close to call as of Wednesday morning.

Karamo was part of a slate of similar candidates that ran for secretary of state positions in key swing states in the hopes of taking control of the country’s election system: The America First Secretary of State Coalition, as the group is known, made it clear that it intended to exert partisan influence over the 2024 election.

Benson’s office and the state of Michigan conducted over 250 routine audits and revealed no evidence of widespread fraud. 

Benson raised record sums for the race and led Karamo, whose election denialism earned her an enthusiastic endorsement from Trump, in polls throughout the year.

Trump campaigned for Karamo and the rest of the GOP ticket in Michigan, where all three statewide Republican candidates spread lies about the 2020 election results or sought to overturn them.

A week before Election Day, Karamo sought to invalidate mail-in ballots cast by voters in Detroit, the state’s largest city and a Democratic bastion.