Committee Members Raise DOJ Request for Michigan Voter Data, Criticize Secretary Benson

Committee discussion shifted to a Department of Justice request for portions of Michigan’s centralized voter list and complaints about Michigan Secretary of State Benson’s handling of oversight requests.

An unidentified committee member said the DOJ asked Michigan to turn over parts of its centralized voter list to verify compliance with the National Voter Registration Act; the member said that, in response, "Secretary Benson wrote, 'the law does not support this assertion.'" The member framed the issue as a privacy and lawful-purpose question: whether protecting voter rolls is a necessary and lawful purpose for such a request.

A different unidentified committee member sharply criticized Secretary Benson’s actions, saying, "Our secretary of state has, really, we had to subpoena her by our oversight committee," and alleging she had at times "made up her own laws" and refused to provide "practical things" requested by oversight. That speaker tied those actions to broader disruption in the 2020 election, saying the secretary’s interpretations "aggravated the situation." No witness identified in the provided transcript offered a formal rebuttal from Secretary Benson during this exchange.

The committee member who initiated the line of questioning yielded back time; the transcript portion provided does not record further testimony from Michigan officials or a formal committee vote related to the DOJ request.