Can Benson's Rule Set 15 Be Stopped? Opponents Sound Alarm
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Poll workers and challengers in the crosshairs
By Kristine Christlieb, MFEI News & Commentary Editor
December 15, 2025
LANSING, Mich. -- A phalanx of Michigan citizens swept into a Department of State hearing in Lansing on Friday, offering written and oral opposition to the last of Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s three administrative rule sets.
Objections to Rule Set 15, which will regulate election challengers and poll watchers, have been gathering steam, and the momentum was evident at the hearing where all comments, except one, opposed Benson’s rulemaking. If the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) adopts the twenty new “rules” in Rule Set 15, they will have the force of law, carrying with them the possibility of criminal penalties, including prison sentences.
Up until now, election officials were given “instructions” in a 2024 Bureau of Elections-issued manual — The Appointment, Rights, and Duties of Election Challengers and Poll Watchers. Without giving the required prior notice of dramatic rule changes in her annual regulatory plan, Benson suddenly claimed, shortly after her announced campaign for governor, the instruction manual wasn’t enough. She needed to put forward new rules because of past problems.
In her Request for Rulemaking (RFR), Benson’s staff wrote: “Beginning with the 2020 elections, the Department observed an increase in questions surrounding challengers, poll watchers and credentialing organizations, which led to updates to the challenger manual listed above. The rules will incorporate those requests for smooth processes and minimal disruptions to the challenge process.”
One individual directly addressed this issue, testifying: “Administrative necessity does not look like this. Last October, our elections ran smoothly under a guidance manual that worked perfectly fine. Yet a mere weeks after the Secretary’s announcement of running for governor, we have a sudden rush to codify restrictions that your own report admits are not necessary.”
Speaking on behalf of Michigan House Speaker Tempore Rachelle Smit (R- District 43) who also chairs the Michigan House Election Integrity Committee, Bryanna Vitale told the Department of State officials, “Representative Smit is strongly opposed to ruleset 15 because it is yet another effort by our Secretary of State to silence citizens who vigilantly act to ensure election integrity.”
Vitale went further saying Smit believes, “This ruleset exceeds the Secretary of State’s administrative authority, contradicts legislative text, and violates constitutional protections.”
Representative Rachelle Smit’s Key Areas of Concern -from Smit’s Statement-
1. These rules force mandatory state-controlled training and certification for election challengers, taking control away from local clerks and election workers.
2. They require all challenger communications to go through a government-designated liaison, turning a simple process into a long, drawn-out, bureaucratic one.
3. They provide subjective standards for "disruption" or "party-related clothing,” which allows for challengers to be arbitrarily removed from polling locations, opening the door to silencing challengers with different political views.
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Katherine Bussard — Executive Director and COO of noted law professor William Wagner’s organization, Salt & Light Global — speaking from her person experience as a Michigan election worker, also addressed the issue of “disruptive” poll challengers.
Bussard said in her near decade of service in local elections, “I’ve never once had a problem in my jurisdiction where I live or in other jurisdictions where I’ve served, I’ve never once witnessed a problem with a poll challenger being disruptive or unruly. Instead, poll challengers, I think, need to be noted in this conversation as individuals who really do represent a genuine public interest.”
Patrice Johnson, chair and founder of Michigan Fair Elections Institute, told Michigan State Department officials:
Our Founding Fathers distilled freedom into clear, elegant principles. The First Amendment protects free speech in just 45 words. Michigan's challenger statutes grant comprehensive oversight in clear, direct language.
Rule Set 15 does the opposite. It muddies law with vague, intimidating language. It contradicts statute, violates the Constitution, and ignores procedural safeguards—while the Secretary who promulgated these rules runs for governor.
The JCAR Committee already has adopted Rule Set 14, regulating electronic poll books. Rule Set 13, currently stuck in procedural limbo, will likely be adopted in 2026.
Since there is no administrative rule appeal process, Johnson believes objections to the rule sets will have to be litigated. “That’s the only thing Benson understands. She will take actions beyond her authority until the courts stop her.”
