Guest speaker Jocelyn Benson - Club Meeting Feb 4

The Berkley Democratic Club is pleased to announce that Jocelyn Benson will be our special guest speaker at our annual club meeting. Join us on Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 7:00pm to meet and speak with Jocelyn and to participate in our annual event.

Join us in the Anderson Middle School Media Center, 3205 Catalpa, and is free and open to the public. Free parking is available behind the building to the south of the school.

Our guest speaker is Jocelyn Benson, seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for Michigan Secretary of State.

"I believe that with the right leadership, Michigan can be the model state for ethical government and fair elections. I believe that the Secretary of State should work to be immune from partisanship and politics. And I believe it is time to focus on implementing common sense reforms that promote and protect the integrity of the elections in our state."

Issues, policies, and priorities include:

• Improving the Integrity of Elections
• Fighting Fraud and Deceptive Practices
• Improving Access to Branch Office Services
• Promote Uniformity and Fairness in Drivers Safety and Licensing

Visit the campaign website: www.votebenson.com

About Jocelyn:

Jocelyn Benson has dedicated her career to working for fair elections. As an election law expert, Benson fights to eliminate barriers to voting and preserve the integrity of our elections. As our Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson will promote access and accountability. She will advocate for a responsive government that serves all Michigan citizens.

Benson is one of the leading election law experts and educators in the state of Michigan. She is a nationally recognized educator, attorney, and voter advocate dedicated to promoting access and protecting the integrity of the election process.

Prior to attending law school at Harvard, Benson lived in Montgomery, Alabama, the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement. She worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center as an investigative journalist, researching white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations. By the time she left Alabama to earn her Masters degree as a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University in the UK, she was instilled with a sense of responsibility for continuing the work of the voting rights advocates who risked their lives in Selma, Alabama, in order to ensure the one person, one vote promise in the Constitution became a reality.

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.

Since 2004, Benson has worked with Michigan Democratic Party’s election protection effort in 2006, and has developed and supervised two statewide nonpartisan election protection efforts in Michigan, in 2007 and 2008. During the 2008 election, she was called to testify before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, where she called on Secretary 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 several 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. Based on her advocacy, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that the closure of the office would violate the Voting Rights Act.

Benson is currently a full time 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 Michigan Center on Election Law and Administration. The Center, incorporated in October 2008, seeks to work with local election administrators to promote innovations and improve the election administration process in Michigan. Benson stepped down from her position with the Center in February 2009.

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, where she worked on the passage of the federal Help America Vote Act. In March 2010, Benson’s book, Democracy and the State Secretary of State, will be published. 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.