Jocelyn Michelle Benson was born on October 22, 1977. She is an American politician and lawyer who has served as the 43rd Secretary of State of Michigan since 2019. She is a member of the Democratic Party. From 2012 to 2016, she was the dean of Wayne State University Law School.

In 2018, Benson was elected as the Secretary of State in Michigan. She won by 8.9 percentage points over Republican Mary Treder Lang. This made her the first Democrat to hold the position since 1995. In 2022, she was elected again, defeating Republican Kristina Karamo by 14 percentage points. This was the largest margin and highest vote share among statewide candidates that year.

Benson is running for governor of Michigan in the 2026 election. She announced her campaign in January 2025.

Education and early career

Benson grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She earned a bachelor's degree from Wellesley College in 1999. She later received a master's degree in sociology from Magdalen College, Oxford, as a Marshall Scholar. After college, Benson moved from Massachusetts to Montgomery, Alabama, to work for the Southern Poverty Law Center. There, she studied hate groups and hate crimes. She also worked as a legal assistant for Nina Totenberg at National Public Radio.

Benson completed a law degree from Harvard Law School. While there, she helped edit the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. From 2002 to 2004, she worked on voting rights policies for the Civil Rights Project. After graduating from law school, Benson moved to Detroit, Michigan, to work as a law clerk for Judge Damon Keith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

In 2005, Benson became a teacher at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit. In 2010, she wrote a book titled State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process. In 2012, at age 36, Benson became dean of Wayne State University Law School. She was the youngest woman ever to lead an accredited law school.

In 2016, Benson left her position as dean to become CEO of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality, a New York-based organization funded by Stephen M. Ross. She held this role until 2018.

Secretary of State

In 2010, while working as a teacher at Wayne Law, Benson ran for the first time for Michigan Secretary of State. She lost the election to Republican candidate Ruth Johnson, who received 51 percent of the votes compared to Benson’s 45 percent.

On October 27, 2017, Benson announced she would run again for Michigan Secretary of State. She won the election on November 6, 2018, defeating Republican Mary Treder Lang. This made Benson the first Democrat to hold the position since Richard Austin left office in 1995. In 2022, Benson won her party’s nomination without competition and won the general election with 56 percent of the vote, defeating Republican candidate Kristina Karamo.

In 2018, Michigan voters approved a change to the state constitution that allowed people to register to vote on Election Day and vote by absentee ballot without restrictions. Benson’s office was responsible for making these changes work. In 2019, the Election Modernization Advisory Committee was created. That same year, Benson also started an Election Security Commission and a Collegiate Student Advisory Task Force.

In October 2019, Benson was named in a lawsuit filed by Priorities USA Action, a Democratic group, over the removal of absentee votes because of differences between a voter’s signature and other documents. In November, the same group sued Benson again, challenging the state’s automatic voter registration law and claiming it unfairly affected young voters’ rights. In March 2021, Michigan’s Court of Claims ruled against Benson, stating that while the content of her guidance did not break election laws, she had not followed the proper steps when giving instructions to election clerks about checking absentee ballot signatures.

In 2020, Benson’s office sent absentee ballot applications to all 7.7 million registered voters in Michigan for the August primary and November general election. This effort was funded by $4.5 million from the federal CARES Act, which provided relief for the coronavirus pandemic. Some Republican lawmakers criticized the move, saying it could harm election security by increasing the risk of voter fraud. Benson’s predecessor, Ruth Johnson, also criticized her for using pandemic relief funds for this purpose.

As President Trump expressed concerns about possible election fraud linked to absentee voting, he specifically criticized Benson’s effort to mail absentee ballot applications. He called her a “rogue Secretary of State” and threatened to withhold federal funds for pandemic relief, though he later withdrew the threat. Court decisions confirmed Benson’s legal right to mail absentee ballot applications to all registered voters in 2020. The state auditor also dismissed Republican claims that ballots from deceased voters were fraudulent. On December 7, 2020, armed supporters of Trump gathered outside Benson’s home, chanting and demanding that Michigan’s election results be overturned. No arrests were made, and police said no laws were broken during the demonstration.

In January 2020, a 72-year-old man was arrested after evidence of violent threats against Benson was found in his home. In December 2022, Benson said threats from people who denied the election results, which began in 2020, had not stopped. In May 2023, she said in an interview that after the election, Trump suggested she be tried for treason and possibly executed, though Trump denied making such claims.

In June 2020, Benson started a system that allowed registered voters to apply for absentee ballots online using their state ID and last four digits of their Social Security numbers. Voters could also send a scanned, signed copy of their absentee ballot application via email. Benson also helped create an online tool for tracking absentee ballots.

Benson said that efforts to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election led to the January 6 United States Capitol attack.

In March 2021, Judge Christopher M. Murray of the State Court of Claims ruled that Benson’s instructions to Michigan clerks before the 2020 election, which told them to assume absentee ballot signatures were accurate, were not valid because they did not follow the proper rule-making process.

Referring to Michigan’s 2015 ranking as the lowest in the U.S. for ethics and transparency, Benson has pushed for ethics reforms and greater government transparency after several scandals. In March 2021, she introduced a legislative plan called “From Worst to First,” which included ideas like expanding the Freedom of Information Act to cover the governor and legislature, requiring elected officials to disclose their personal finances, and tightening campaign finance rules. In 2023, she criticized lawmakers for not updating the state’s lobbying and campaign finance laws, saying they were “far, far behind” other states.

In April 2021, Benson announced that all visitors to secretary of state offices would need an appointment. That same year, she said 60 percent of transactions were done online. Despite criticism about ending walk-in services, Benson defended the appointment-only system, saying it was “not perfect” but better than long wait times.

In 2022, Benson was one of five people honored with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

In September 2022, the Election Integrity Force and others sued Benson and Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, to cancel the results of the 2020 election.

On January 6, 2023, Benson received the Presidential Citizens Medal from President Joe Biden.

In July 2023, Benson confirmed that federal prosecutors interviewed her for several hours in March as part of an investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. She did not share specific details but said the focus was on how misinformation and threats affected election workers.

In October 2023, a 60-year-old man from Detroit was sentenced to 15 months of probation after threatening to kill Benson and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

In a 2023 article for The Washington Post, Benson said that secretaries of state, including herself, should not decide alone whether President Trump is eligible to run for office under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. She said courts, especially the Supreme Court, are the proper places for such decisions. In November 2023, Trump’s legal team sued to stop Benson from keeping him off Michigan’s 2024 ballot. The lawsuit asked a court to block Benson from excluding Trump, linking the case to a previous lawsuit that claimed Trump’s actions during the Capitol riot violated the 14th Amendment.

Before the 2024 presidential election, Benson, along with other Democrats, joined the Democracy Playbook, a plan by the NewDEAL Forum to improve the election system. She supports stronger punishments for people who harass election workers and more funding for election administration.

Benson was considered a possible candidate for the 2024 U.S. Senate race in Michigan to replace retiring Senator Debbie Stabenow. In March 2023, she said she would not run for the Senate. In January 2025, on the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, she announced she would run for Michigan governor in the 2026 race to replace outgoing Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who cannot run again due to term limits.

Personal life

Benson married Ryan Friedrichs in 2006 while they were both students at Harvard University. Friedrichs is a U.S. Army veteran, and Benson has written about the loneliness she felt during his time in the military. In 2012, she started the group Military Spouses of Michigan to help military families in the state, as there was no active military base in Michigan. Benson and Friedrichs have one son.

Friedrichs works as a vice president at Related Companies, a real estate company in New York owned by billionaire Stephen M. Ross, who is a major donor to Benson’s political campaigns. He was a lobbyist but stopped his work as a lobbyist when Benson began her campaign for governor. His company is working on a controversial AI data center in Saline Township, and Friedrichs has said he will not be involved in any projects related to the state if Benson becomes governor. The Michigan Advance wrote that the connection raised questions about whether Benson could remain fair and independent, as Related Digital has a big business interest in the state.

Benson is a runner who has finished over 30 marathons. In 2016, she ran the Boston Marathon for the second time and became one of a small group of women in history to finish the race while eight months pregnant.