LANSING, Mich. (WZMQ) – After months of back and forth between lawmakers and Michigan’s Department of State (DOS), the requested documents have been published on a public webpage for the public. The Secretary of State published a release Friday, stating that her department is committed to transparency, and announcing the department has provided 1,900 additional pages of materials to the House Committee on Oversight.
Last fall, the House Committee on Elections requested a list of documents from the DOS used to train Michigan election officials. The department only complied in part, withholding documents they said were confidential and could compromise state elections. In April, the new House Committee on Oversight called for the Secretary of State to release the withheld documents, setting an April 14 deadline that the Secretary did not meet. Lawmakers then served Benson a subpoena for the documents, which she initially refused to comply with, a spokesperson with her office claiming they intended to take the subpoena to court.
The DOS released this statement early Friday afternoon:
“Today, the Michigan Department of State (MDOS) provided approximately 1,900 additional pages of materials to the Michigan House Committee on Oversight. These materials are from the eLearning center for Michigan clerks, do not contain sensitive information related to election security, and are now available online for public review at Michigan.gov/ElectionTransparency.
“Everyone at the Michigan Department of State is committed to transparency and openness to the people we serve,” said Chief Legal Director Khyla Craine. “We are also committed to protecting sensitive information which, if publicly released, could be used by bad actors to interfere with the chain of custody of ballots, tamper with election equipment, or impersonate a clerk on Election Day.”
The materials released by MDOS today include training newsletters sent to clerks by the Bureau of Elections (BOE), the clerk training accreditation manual, and the Election Day “flip chart” manual used by election workers at the polls. These items, along with the documents MDOS previously provided to the House Oversight Committee, are now also available on the MDOS Election Transparency site – over 3,000 pages of information open for public review.
MDOS will continue to release additional materials to the Committee and on the public site once the department’s legal and election security teams are able to review them and redact any sensitive information that could compromise election security.
Learn more at Michigan.gov/ElectionTransparency.“
