Election Expert Jocelyn Benson to Speak July 28 at Democratic Picnic
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Jocelyn Benson, Democratic candidate for Secretary of State, to speak here Tuesday July 28.
Bay County Democrats will stage a picnic Tuesday night July 28 with a special flavor.
Everything served will be made in Michigan, and the keynote speaker, Jocelyn Benson, candidate for Secretary of State, is an assistant professor at Wayne State University Law School, Detroit.
Ms. Benson is known in the tri-county area for her efforts in 2007 that kept open a Secretary of State's office in Buena Vista Township, Saginaw County.
According to Bay County Democratic Party officials, Benson is considered one of the leading election law experts and educators in the state of Michigan. She is a nationally recognized educator, attorney, and voter advocate dedicated to promoting access and protecting the integrity of the election process.
Benson graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College, where she founded the now-annual Women in American Political Activism conference and was the first student to be elected to serve in the governing body for the town of Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Prior to attending law school at Harvard, Benson lived in Montgomery, Alabama, where she worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center as an investigative journalist, researching white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations.
She earned her Masters degree as a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University in England.
During the 2004 Presidential election, Benson was hired to develop the first nationwide Election Protection program for the Democratic National Committee. Benson selected, recruited, and trained Voter Protection coordinators in 21 states. The program resulted in deployment of over 17,000 trained election law lawyers.
Since 2004, Benson has worked with Michigan Democratic Party's election protection effort in 2006, and has developed and supervised two statewide nonpartisan election protection efforts in Michigan, in 2007 and 2008.
During the 2008 election, she was called to testify before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, where she called on Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land to ban the use of foreclosure lists to challenge voters' eligibility on Election Day. She is a frequent commentator on voting rights and election law on several local news and radio broadcasts.
In 2007, Benson worked with several groups to successfully block the closure of a Secretary of State branch office in Buena Vista Township, Michigan. Based on her advocacy, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that the closure of the office would violate the Voting Rights Act.
Ms. Benson is currently a full time Assistant Professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School, where she teaches Election Law.
She is also an appointed member of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Election Law and helped create the Richard Austin Center on Election Law and Administration. The Austin Center, incorporated in October 2008, seeks to work with local election administrators to promote innovations and improve the election administration process in Michigan.
Prior to her appointment as a Professor, Benson served as a law clerk to the Honorable Damon J. Keith on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. From 2002-2004, she served as the Voting Rights Policy Coordinator of the Harvard Civil Rights Project, where she worked on the passage of the federal Help America Vote Act.
In late 2009, Benson's book, "Democracy and the State Secretary of State," will be published by Ashgate Publishing of Surrey, England. The book highlights best practices of Secretaries from throughout the country and seeks to inform voters about how Secretaries of State from either side of the political spectrum can work to advance democracy and election reform.
Benson lives in Detroit, Michigan, with her husband, Ryan Friedrichs.
Pam Faris, wife of Lt. Governor John Cherry, will also be on hand to update picnic attendees on the latest news and information on the Cherry campaign for governor.
Tickets are $10 a person and kids 12 and under eat free. You can Purchase tickets from any Young Dem, at youngdems@baycountydems.org, or by calling Spencer Tobias at 989 482 8498.###
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