MI Secretary of State Is Enforcing Laws She Wrote Herself
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By Patrice Johnson, Chair and Founder, Michigan Fair Elections Institute
April 17, 2026
When a government official sends a letter threatening criminal liability, every citizen expects one thing: that the law being enforced actually exists.
On April 14, Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater sent a letter to Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop demanding she explain her voter registration maintenance activities, document every notice she sent, and provide comprehensive Excel spreadsheets of voter status changes — all by April 23.
The letter cited the possibility of criminal misdemeanor charges under MCL 168.931(1)(g) for failing to comply with a "lawful instruction" of the Secretary of State.
Just one problem: the core legal standard the letter is enforcing does not appear in Michigan law.
Three Sources of "Authority" — Only One Is Real
The Brater letter cites three categories of authority for its demands. A careful reading reveals that only one of those categories is genuine statute.
What is real: MCL 168.509bb prohibits canceling a voter's registration solely because the voter missed one or two elections. This is legitimate law. The county versus township clerk jurisdiction question under MCL 168.496 et seq. is also a statutory issue. These are fair questions for the Bureau to ask and for Clerk Bishop to address.
What is not law: The letter's central evidentiary demand — that Bishop prove she "independently verified" the information she acted on as "reliable information" before issuing confirmation and cancellation notices — rests on two sources that do not exist in law or carry the force of law.
The first is the Election Officials' Manual. The letter cites Chapter 2, page 28, which states that confirmation and cancellation notices may be sent only when a clerk receives "reliable information." The Manual is an administrative guidance document. State law, MCL 168.31, authorizes the Secretary of State to "issue instructions" and "advise and direct" local election officials. But these officials report to their constituents, not the SOS.
Secretary Benson and her surrogate Jonathan Brater may issue instructions, but instructions are not the same as law. And these instructions are supposed to comport with law. The criminal misdemeanor provision of MCL 168.931(1)(g) attaches to failure to perform a "legal duty," not failure to follow a guidance manual.
The second source is Administrative Rule R 168.252(5), from Rule Set 2025-13. That rule requires clerks to independently verify information from certain sources before issuing voter notices. Under R 168.252(3), information from databases, third-party lists, and similar sources is deemed insufficiently reliable on its own. The rule effectively mandates personal investigation before a clerk may ask a registrant to verify their eligibility.
But here’s the core problem: That personal knowledge and independent verification standard do not exist in Michigan Law.
Michigan's voter registration challenge statute, MCL 168.512, requires three things from a challenger: identify the voter, state grounds, and submit an affidavit. Benson’s Department of State added an entire layer of evidentiary requirements when it “promulgated” Rule Set 2025-13. Those legally unauthorized requirements include notarization, individual affidavits, independent verification, and economic barriers estimated at over $1,500 per 100 challenges — that no legislature ever enacted.
As an example, under the SOS’s self-generated rules, the clerk would have to knock on doors and witness homeowners firsthand as they explained the prior owner or tenant had died or moved away years ago.
The BOE letter is using a legally unauthorized rule set to manufacture an enforcement standard. Then it is threatening criminal liability for failing to meet that legally unauthorized standard.
When asked about the issue, Representative Rachelle Smit, (R-Dist. 43) told this writer, “Secretary Benson's successive rule sets are creating a constitutional crisis in slow motion.”
Smit is House Speaker Pro Tempore and chairs the House Election Integrity Committee.
The Manual the Legislature Cannot See
A second layer to this story deserves equal attention.The Election Officials' Manual is the document the Bureau of Elections cites as the source for clerk duties, notice procedures, and registration maintenance standards. It is distributed to clerks through the eLearning Center and posted online. The Bureau updates the Manual without public notice-and-comment rulemaking at the Secretary of State's discretion.
The Manual has never been formally promulgated. It has no statutory basis as a legally binding document. When the Michigan Legislature sought to examine the training and guidance materials the Bureau was using to direct clerk conduct — including the materials underlying Rule Set 2025-15's mandatory poll challenger training — Secretary Benson refused to produce the Manual. The legislature subpoenaed the training materials. Again she refused. The Legislature sued, and a court case is in progress. House of Representatives v. Benson, Case No. 25-000096-MZ.
The result is a system in which the Secretary of State enforces standards sourced from a document she controls, updates without public process, and will not share with the branch of government constitutionally responsible for election oversight. The Elections Clause assigns to state legislatures the primary authority to regulate federal elections, subject to congressional override:“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”
Not an Isolated Incident
The Manual-as-enforcement-mechanism is not an isolated incident, and the Brater letter to Clerk Bishop is not a one-off enforcement action. The current situation is the visible edge of a broader and documented pattern, one in which each successive rule set expands the Secretary of State's authority over election officials and processes. This administration is systematically weaponizing its bureaucracy to narrow the discretion of local officials and concentrate administrative decision-making in the executive branch—all without legislative authorization.
In Part 2 of this series, MFEI will examine Rule Set 2025-63 ST, a new rule set moving toward adoption. Part 2 will document how the enforcement pattern visible in the Bishop letter is being written into permanent administrative law.
The public hearing is May 22, 2026. What enters the Administrative Code in the coming weeks will govern November 2026.
MFEI is supporting the rights of clerks to serve their constituents and not become caught in an impossible compliance conflict between federal law, state law, and a weaponized Secretary of State Elections manual.
The full 195-page Compromised Checkpoints report is available free of charge at MiFairElections.org/library.
Patrice Johnson is Chair and Co-Founder of the Michigan Fair Elections Institute (501(c)(3)) and Pure Integrity Michigan Elections (501(c)(4)). A former Fortune 50 executive and founder of five technology companies, she is also the award-winning author of The Fall and Rise of Tyler Johnson, a book that became the basis of the PBS documentary film, Finding Tyler.
