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Jocelyn F. Benson is an election law expert and educator from Michigan. She is currently a full time Assistant Professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School.

Education and Early Career
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. She subsequently earned her Master's in Sociology as a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, conducting research into the sociological implications of white supremacy and neo-Nazism. She received her J.D. from Harvard University Law School, where she was a general editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.

Prior to attending law school, 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. Benson has also worked as a summer associate for voting rights and election law for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and as a legal assistant to Nina Totenberg at National Public Radio.

Voter Protection and Election Law
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.

After working with the Michigan Democratic Party's election protection effort in 2006, Benson developed and supervised two statewide nonpartisan election protection efforts in Michigan in 2007 and 2008. She worked with Michigan Democratic Party's election protection effort in 2006. During the 2008 election, she was called to testify before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, where she called on Secretary 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 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. The U.S. Department of Justice concluded that the closure of the office would violate the Voting Rights Act.

Benson is currently an 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, a non-profit organization that sought to link academic research to civil rights advocacy efforts, where she worked on the passage of the federal Help America Vote Act.

In late 2009, Benson's first book, Democracy and the Secretary: the Crucial Role of State Secretaries of State in Promoting Democracy, will be published by Ashgate. 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.

2010 Secretary of State candidacy
After receiving support for her proposals for early voting and no-reason absentee voting at the Michigan Democratic Party Convention on February 21, 2009, Benson filed paperwork in March of 2009, with the Secretary of State to create an exploratory committee for a campaign for Michigan Secretary of State in 2010.

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.

Family and Personal Life
Benson lives in Detroit, Michigan, with her husband, Ryan Friedrichs. A long-distance runner, she averages two full marathons per year. In May 2008, she qualified to run the 2009 Boston Marathon.