Michigan's Jocelyn Benson on defending voting rights
This is a recent interview with Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson about her experiences facing the efforts by Trump supporters after the 2020 election to nullify the vote and about the urgency of pro-voting legislation at the federal and state levels.
She discusses Michigan’s felony charges against 16 Trump partisans who filed fraudulent document claiming to be qualified Electors for the Electoral College
She also stresses: "It's important to seek full accountability but not just put this on the shoulders of one person, the former President. We know certainly that he was a central piece to a lot of different things" and has indictments currently pending against him.
“And I think when we talk about accountability we have to seek full accountability for everyone who was involved in this really unprecedented, un-American scheme to overturn a Presidential election."
She notes that the Trump supporters’ challenges to the vote were particularly intense in swing states in counties with many minority voters: "Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Phoenix." It was clearly a strategy of "using racism to sow seeds of doubt" about the validity of the election. And she expects more of the same from the Republicans in the future.
Given her own experience as Michigan’s secretary of state targeted by far-right extremists, what might sound banal coming from someone else is the voice of experience coming from Jocelyn Benson:
When the majority of people ... are on the side of democracy, on the side of the election results, because they were the majority of the voters in Michigan, you always have to remember that the majority of people are on your side, the vast majority are on the side of democracy, and the truth, and the law, and history, is all on our side.