User:Lostgirl00/JocelynBenson

Jocelyn F. Benson is 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. On March 5, 2009, she filed paperwork with the Secretary of State to create an exploratory committee as for a possible campaign for Michigan Secretary of State in 2010.

Prior to attending law school at Harvard, Benson lived in Montgomery, Alabama, the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement. She worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center as an investigative journalist, researching white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations. By the time she left Alabama to earn her Master's degree as a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, she was instilled with a sense of responsibility for continuing the work of the voting rights advocates who risked their lives in Selma, Alabama, in order to ensure the one person, one vote promise in the Constitution became a reality.

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 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.

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. Being a member of the committee inspired her to 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. It will highlight the crucial role that a strong Secretary of State’s office can play in protecting the integrity of elections. 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.

After receiving overwhelming support for her proposals for early voting and no-reason absentee voting at the Michigan Democratic Party Convention on February 21, 2009, Benson was encouraged to take the next step in considering a run by creating an exploratory committee. With the formation of the committee, Benson began a listening tour throughout the state to discuss what can be done to improve elections and the other functions of the Secretary of State’s office. She plans to make a final decision on whether to pursue a run before the end of 2009.

Benson lives in Detroit, Michigan, with her husband, Ryan Friedrichs.