Lifestyle

Armed Protesters Alleging Voter Fraud Terrorize MI Sec Of State At Her Home

by Julie Scagell
Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s four-year-old son was home at the time

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson was putting up Christmas decorations and sitting down to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas with her four-year-old son when dozens of armed protesters showed up on her doorstep shouting “Stop the Steal,” referring to the unfounded claims of voter fraud in the state.

The crowd accused Benson, a Democrat, and Michigan’s chief election officer, of turning their backs on the claims of widespread voter fraud in a state Donald Trump lost by more than 154,000 votes to President-elect Joe Biden.

According to the Washington Post, police responded just before 10 p.m. and the protesters left with no arrests. “They shouted baseless conspiracy theories about the election, and in videos uploaded to social media, at least one individual could be heard shouting ‘you’re murderers’ within earshot of her child’s bedroom,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy (D) said in a joint statement on Sunday, adding that, “This mob-like behavior is an affront to basic morality and decency,” and “terrorizing children and families at their own homes is not activism.”

“As my four-year-old son and I were finishing up decorating the house for Christmas on Saturday night, and he was about to sit down to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas, dozens of armed individuals stood outside my home shouting obscenities and chanting into bullhorns in the dark of night,” Benson said in a statement about the incident.

Trump’s baseless attacks and lawsuits after losing the election have resulted in multiple harassment incidents aimed at Michigan officials as well as officials in Georgia, Arizona, Vermont, Kentucky, Minnesota, and Colorado.

“We will not stand down, we will not stop, we will continue to rise up, we will continue to take this election back for the president that actually won it by a landslide,” Genevieve Peters, a protester who was at Benson’s home posted in a video online. “This is not over. It is far from over – in fact, it’s just beginning.”

Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers voted two weeks ago to certify the state’s election results for Biden, despite Trump’s failed attempts to overturn the results. When the certification happened, Benson proclaimed, “Democracy has prevailed.”

“Through blatantly false press releases, purely political legislative hearings, bogus legal claims and so called ‘affidavits’ that fail to allege any clear or cogent evidence of wrongdoing,” Benson said in her statement,” those unhappy with the results of this election have perpetuated an unprecedented, dangerous, egregious campaign to erode the public’s confidence in the results of one of the most secure, accessible and transparent elections in our state’s history.”