By Mike Kruzman /news@whmi.com

A local legislator has gained some ground on her push for greater election security measures, but Michigan’s Secretary of State is holding firm on others.

Late last week, the Michigan Joint Committee of Administrative Rules proposed revisions to election law that Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson rejected. In that broad rejection, however, there were individual changes Benson’s department said it would accept.

Republican State Representative Ann Bollin of Brighton Township is the chair of the House Elections and Ethics Committee. She said, in a release from her office, that she is glad Benson is listening to concerns she and others have on the state’s signature matching standards.

Last year, Benson proposed rules to require election officials to review signatures on absentee applications and ballots starting with the presumption that the signature is valid. A release from the Department of State, last Friday, says they are not opposed to removing that language.

Benson did refuse the request to revise the rule that maintains the online absentee application created in 2020, which allows people applying online to use a stored digital signature on file or upload their own. Bollin said that this caused “all kinds of confusion” in the 2020 election and that she had clerks across the state reaching out to her, concerned about it.

Benson said, in a release from her office, that Michigan’s citizens voted overwhelmingly in 2018 to enshrine in the state constitution their right to vote absentee and that she will not let a small group of partisan legislators restrict those rights to spread and codify long debunked conspiracy theories and lies.

See Benson’s release here: https://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,7-127--578249--,00.html

See Bollin’s release here: https://gophouse.org/posts/rep-bollin-sos-withdraws-attempt-to-water-down-signature-verification-standards-after-legislative-push-back