Justice Kavanaugh Demands Answers From Benson After Citizenship Petition Is Blocked [VIDEO]

Adriana Stone 0 2 min read

Justice Kavanaugh Demands Answers From Benson After Citizenship Petition Is Blocked [VIDEO]

Michigan’s fight over citizenship requirements for voting has moved from Lansing to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Brett Kavanaugh is demanding answers after two Democratic members of the Michigan Board of State Canvassers blocked a petition backed by 709,841 signatures.

The Americans for Citizens Only Voting petition reportedly had 59.1% more signatures than the minimum needed to qualify for the ballot. The threshold was 446,198 signatures. The measure also had support from 87% of likely Michigan voters, according to the report.

The petition was delivered on March 4, 2026. That was more than four months before the July 6 filing deadline and eight months before Election Day. Yet the Bureau of Elections reportedly held the signatures for five and a half months before releasing a 1,000-signature sample on July 24.

Election staff later issued a report saying the petition was 17 signatures short. That report did not arrive until August 17, or 166 days after the petition boxes were delivered. Supporters were left with only 17 days to challenge the findings, gather affidavits, and appear before the Board of State Canvassers on August 24.

That timing created a serious problem. Ballots had to be finalized for the November 3 election. The group asked the Michigan Supreme Court to intervene. After that court did not act on the case, the group turned to Justice Kavanaugh on August 31 and asked for an order by September 3. The Board of State Canvassers was scheduled to meet on September 4 to finalize the ballot.

The central dispute involves signatures rejected during a “random sampling.” Staff members under Michigan Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater said some petition signatures did not match signatures on file. But supporters argued that people’s signatures naturally change over time.

That argument carries extra weight because Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson previously instructed clerks to ignore signature matching when accepting absentee ballots and assume the signature matched. The report portrays that earlier policy as sharply different from the intense scrutiny applied to the petition.

Attorneys working with the petition campaign obtained 23 affidavits from the 1,000-signature sample. The affidavits were intended to show that signatures rejected by election staff were valid. Nineteen were submitted by the 10 a.m. Saturday deadline. Four more were delivered later that day, although the exact delivery time was unclear.

One of those affidavits became the flashpoint. Democratic members of the board rejected it because they said it arrived on Saturday but missed the 10 a.m. procedural deadline. At the same time, the report says both Democratic members and Benson’s elections director agreed with the two Republican members that the signature matched the signature in the Qualified Voter File.

That exchange could become important in court. If the signature matched, the argument goes, then it may have been wrongly rejected during the original review. The petition’s supporters say the board should not be allowed to use a procedural deadline to keep a valid signature out of the count while acknowledging that the signature itself was genuine.

Watch the exchange described in the report here:

The post accompanying the video called the moment “SEEMS LIKE A SLAM DUNK!” and accused Benson and her staff of manufacturing issues surrounding the petition.

The report also points readers to two additional posts related to the Michigan canvassing fight:

The immediate question is whether the petition will receive a full and timely review before Michigan’s ballot deadline. Supporters say the state’s long delay created an avoidable crisis. They now want the courts to ensure that disputed signatures are judged on the evidence, not buried by the clock.

Send this to a friend