OUTRAGE: Jocelyn Benson’s Election Bureau Moves to KILL Michigan Proof-of-Citizenship and Photo ID Ballot Measure After “Random” 1,000-Signature Sample Leaves Petition Just 17 Valid Signatures Short — Despite 709,841 Collected
Democrat-aligned election officials have effectively killed a popular citizen-led ballot initiative that would have required proof of U.S. citizenship and a photo ID to vote.
Americans for Citizen Voting–Michigan submitted a staggering 709,841 signatures supporting its proposed constitutional amendment, more than 263,000 above the 446,198-signature requirement.
But the Michigan Bureau of Elections, operating under Democrat Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson, is now recommending that the petition be declared “insufficient.”
The recommendation is based on a statistical review of only 1,000 randomly selected signatures from the more than 709,000 submitted.
According to the Bureau’s official 13-page staff report, election workers initially determined that 692 of the 1,000 sampled signatures were valid.
That number would have been more than enough for certification.
Then came a challenge filed by attorney Robert LaBrant and the left-wing voting organization Promote the Vote Action.
The organization challenged 377 signatures in the sample. Of those, 217 had already been rejected during the Bureau’s initial review, leaving challenges against another 160 signatures that staff originally considered valid.
After processing those challenges, the number of accepted signatures plunged from 692 to 607. The campaign responded with evidence seeking to restore 149 signatures, but Bureau staff reinstated only five.
The final count was 612 valid signatures. The campaign needed 629.
That means the fate of a statewide constitutional amendment supported by more than 709,000 Michigan residents could come down to how bureaucrats treated just17 signaturesin a 1,000-name sample.
Based on that sample, the Bureau estimated that the petition contained 434,423 valid signatures, 11,775 below the required 446,198.
The Bureau therefore recommended that the Board of State Canvassers declare the petition insufficient.
In other words, officials did not individually determine that the campaign lacked 446,198 valid signatures. They projected that conclusion across the entire petition using a sample representing roughly 0.14% of the signatures submitted.
This is how Democrats kill election integrity measures they cannot defeat at the ballot box. More than 700,000 Michiganders signed the petitions.
Democrat staffers and their allies then nitpicked a tiny sample, invalidated signatures over technicalities such as city/township mismatches, date issues, illegibility, or circulator information, and declared the whole effort dead.
“Our petitions were submitted more than four months before the deadline, yet here we are at the last minute being told they should not be certified,” said Kurt O’Keefe, the initiative’s treasurer.
“We spent months reviewing these petitions, removing duplicates and discarding signatures we believed might not comply with Michigan law. We are confident we submitted significantly more than the 446,198 valid signatures required.”
Americans for Citizen Voting–Michigan spokeswoman Kristin Combs vowed that the campaign would continue fighting.
“The fight continues. More than 700,000 Michiganders signed our petition. They deserve a vote.”
She is absolutely right.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/08/outrage-jocelyn-bensons-election-bureau-kills-michigan-proof/