The secretary of state is the most administratively broad statewide office in American government. Depending on the state, a secretary of state might oversee elections, register corporations, maintain the state archives, commission notaries, regulate lobbyists, charter new businesses, and administer the state's securities laws, sometimes all at once. Most voters couldn't have named their secretary of state a decade ago. After 2020, that changed.
The Many Duties of the Office
No two secretaries of state have identical job descriptions. State constitutions and statutes determine what each office does (NASS, the National Association of Secretaries of State, tracks the office across all 47 states that have one), and states have layered responsibilities onto the position over two centuries without much coordination. The result is one of the most variable executive offices in American government. That said, most secretaries of state share a core set of responsibilities.
Elections administration is the function that brought the office into the national spotlight, but it is rarely the only job. In most states, the secretary of state serves as the chief elections officer, responsible for voter registration systems, certification of election results, candidate filing, and oversight of local election officials. The scope of that authority varies widely. In some states the secretary of state (SoS) sets binding rules for how counties run elections; in others the office provides guidance but counties have wide discretion.
Business filings are the office's other major function and, in many states, a larger day-to-day workload than elections. Corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships, and other business entities must register with the secretary of state. The office maintains the official record of every business legally operating in the state, processes annual reports, handles name availability searches, and in many states maintains the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) filing system that lenders use to secure interests in business assets. For the corporate community, the secretary of state is a constant presence: every merger, restructuring, or new market entry typically requires a filing with this office.
Beyond those two core functions, secretaries of state commonly oversee state archives and records (the official repository of government documents, historical records, and official acts), notary public commissions (including appointment, record-keeping, and in some states online notarization rules), lobbyist registration, trademark registration, and apostille and document authentication services for documents used internationally. Several states also vest the SoS with authority over state securities regulation under the so-called blue sky laws, though many states have moved this to a separate department.
The breadth of the office is one reason it has proved durable. Even in a state where the secretary of state has limited elections authority, the business filing function alone sustains a substantial office with real relevance to the private sector.
How Secretaries of State Are Selected
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 35 states have voters choose their secretary of state by direct popular election, typically to a four-year term concurrent with the governor. Twelve states fill the office by appointment or legislative election rather than popular vote. Three states (Alaska, Hawaii, and Utah) do not have a secretary of state position at all.
- 35 states elect their secretary of state by popular vote.
- 3 states elect the secretary of state through the state legislature: Maine, New Hampshire, and Tennessee each have their full legislature vote to fill the position. Tennessee's secretary of state serves a four-year term and is one of the most insulated from electoral politics of any statewide officer in the country.
- 9 states have their secretary of state appointed by the governor: Delaware, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. In these states the secretary of state serves at the governor's pleasure and can be removed or replaced without voter involvement.
- 3 states have no secretary of state: Alaska, Hawaii, and Utah. See below for why.
These categories have been remarkably stable. Most states set the selection method in their original constitutions or in 19th-century amendments, and very few have changed since. The most notable modern exception is Florida, which switched from an elected secretary of state to a governor-appointed position in 2003 after voters approved Amendment 8 in 1998. The amendment reduced Florida's elected cabinet from six officers to three, making the secretary of state and commissioner of education gubernatorial appointments. Katherine Harris, who became nationally known for her role certifying the disputed 2000 presidential election results, was the last elected Florida secretary of state. Going the other direction, Ohio switched from legislative selection to popular election in its 1851 constitution. Maine has considered changing its legislative-election method at least 21 times without ever adopting a different approach.
The method of selection shapes the office's character in important ways. An elected secretary of state answers to the voters independently of the governor and can pursue an agenda that diverges from the administration's. An appointed secretary of state is, in effect, a member of the governor's cabinet on this set of issues. When elections administration produces controversy, this difference matters: an elected SoS has a separate political base from which to defend their decisions, while an appointed SoS's tenure depends entirely on the governor's confidence.
Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Massachusetts call the office the "Secretary of the Commonwealth" rather than Secretary of State. The title is different; the responsibilities are broadly similar to those of a secretary of state elsewhere. Pennsylvania and Virginia appoint their Secretary of the Commonwealth; the governor fills both positions without a direct popular vote. Massachusetts is the exception: its Secretary of the Commonwealth is directly elected by voters, and long-tenured holders like William Galvin (D), now in his 16th consecutive two-year term, have built the kind of independent political base that appointed secretaries cannot. Pennsylvania's Secretary of the Commonwealth oversees elections; Virginia's focuses primarily on business filings and administrative functions.
The Three States Without a Secretary of State
Alaska, Hawaii, and Utah each eliminated or never created a separate secretary of state position, consolidating those functions under the lieutenant governor instead.
Alaska's case is historically the most interesting. When Alaska became a state in 1959, its original constitution established a position called the Secretary of State as the state's second-ranking executive officer. Critically, the Secretary of State was elected on a joint ticket with the governor, not separately, making the relationship more like a modern lieutenant governor than a standalone statewide official. The Secretary of State was directly in line for the governorship and served as the governor's running mate. In 1970, Alaska voters approved a constitutional amendment renaming the position "Lieutenant Governor," which it remains today. Alaska's Lt. Governor still performs the functions most states assign to a secretary of state, including oversight of elections. Alaska is the only state that, in effect, started with a Secretary of State and converted it into a lieutenant governorship. (In our elections database, we treat Alaska's pre-1970 secretaries of state as lieutenant governors for consistency.)
Hawaii has never had a secretary of state. When it became a state in 1959, the lieutenant governor was assigned the administrative and elections functions that a SoS would handle elsewhere. Hawaii's lieutenant governor is elected jointly with the governor on the same ticket, similar to Alaska's original design.
Utah abolished its elected secretary of state office in 1976 when voters approved a constitutional amendment transferring the office's functions to the lieutenant governor. The consolidation was driven by efficiency arguments: Utah's relatively small population made a separate statewide office difficult to justify.
When the Secretary of State Becomes Governor
In three states, the secretary of state is next in line for the governorship when the lieutenant governor is unavailable: Arizona, Oregon, and Wyoming. This succession provision has produced sitting governors in recent memory.
In 2015, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber (D) resigned amid an ethics scandal, and Secretary of State Kate Brown (D) became governor, the first openly LGBTQ+ governor in U.S. history. Brown had not run for governor and had not been on anyone's radar as a potential chief executive; she served out the remainder of Kitzhaber's term and then won election in her own right in 2018, ultimately serving through January 2023. The Oregon succession illustrated both the drama and the democratic legitimacy questions that arise when an unelected official assumes the governorship: Brown had won a statewide race for secretary of state, giving her an argument for a genuine political mandate, but voters had not elected her with the governorship in mind.
Arizona: Succession in a Swing State
Arizona's secretary of state succession provision has kept the office in the center of political calculations for decades. In 2022, Republican Governor Doug Ducey (R) was term-limited and could not run again. Katie Hobbs (D), the sitting secretary of state, ran for governor. The Republican nominee for secretary of state was Mark Finchem (R), a prominent 2020 election denier. Hobbs won the governorship, but had Finchem also won the SoS race, it would have put an election denier next in line for the governor's office in one of the country's most competitive states. Finchem lost to Democrat Adrian Fontes (D), but the scenario illustrated why SoS races carry stakes beyond the office itself in states where the secretary of state sits in the line of succession.
The 2020 Effect
The secretary of state was once among the least-noticed statewide offices. That changed after the 2020 presidential election, when President Trump's legal team and allied activists targeted state election officials with pressure campaigns to reject or delay certification of results. Secretaries of state found themselves at the center of a sustained, public dispute over election integrity that thrust an otherwise low-profile office into the national spotlight.
Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) became nationally known after a recorded phone call in which then-President Trump pressured him to "find" enough votes to flip Georgia's results. Raffensperger certified Joe Biden's victory, survived a Trump-backed primary challenge from U.S. Representative Jody Hice (R) in 2022, and won reelection. His experience became the defining case study of what it looked like when a secretary of state resisted political pressure to alter election outcomes.
The 2022 election cycle saw unprecedented national attention on SoS races. Twenty-seven states held secretary of state elections that year, and several competitive states saw candidates who had publicly questioned the 2020 results win Republican primaries. In Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada, 2020 election skeptics became the GOP nominees for secretary of state. All three lost their general elections: Jocelyn Benson (D) was reelected in Michigan, Adrian Fontes (D) won the open seat in Arizona, and Cisco Aguilar (D) flipped Nevada's seat from Republican to Democrat. The 2022 results were widely read as a rejection by swing-state voters of candidates who had made 2020 election denial a centerpiece of their campaigns.
The nationalization of SoS races has not subsided. Election administration has become a standing ideological flashpoint, with Republican-controlled legislatures passing new rules on voter registration, drop boxes, signature verification, and absentee ballots, and Democratic secretaries of state in competitive states resisting implementation or challenging the rules in court. Both parties now pour national money into SoS races in competitive states, and secretaries of state are expected to have public positions on contested procedural questions that were once handled quietly as administrative matters.
Long-Tenured Officeholders
Before the post-2020 era, the secretary of state's defining characteristic was longevity. Because the office was low-profile and rarely attracted serious opposition, incumbents who built competent administrative records could hold the office for decades.
The most extreme example is Bill Gardner of New Hampshire, who served as secretary of state from 1976 to 2022, a total of 45 years and 23 consecutive terms elected by the state legislature. Gardner was the longest-serving secretary of state in U.S. history. He retired in 2022 after facing criticism for his role on President Trump's short-lived election integrity commission.
Among popularly elected secretaries of state, William Galvin (D) of Massachusetts has the longest current tenure. He has served as Secretary of the Commonwealth since January 1995, winning 16 consecutive elections. Massachusetts uses two-year terms for the office, giving Galvin more election victories than any other sitting secretary of state. He has built the position into a significant regulatory presence, overseeing both elections and securities regulation for the commonwealth.
Elaine Marshall (D) of North Carolina has served since 1997 and won her eighth consecutive election in 2024, having first won the office in 1996. Marshall's longevity is notable in part because North Carolina's secretary of state is not responsible for overseeing elections (that function belongs to the State Board of Elections), which has largely insulated her from the post-2020 political turbulence that affected her peers elsewhere.
These long tenures reflect a pre-2020 norm: secretaries of state who stayed out of political controversy and ran their offices competently could hold the seat for decades. That calculus has changed in competitive states, where the office is now a genuine battleground.
From Secretary of State to Governor
Like other statewide elected offices, the secretary of state has served as a launching pad for higher office. The path from SoS to governor is less common than the lieutenant governor route, but recent cycles have produced several notable examples.
| Name | State | SoS Tenure | Governor | Path |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Katie Hobbs (D) | AZ | 2019–2023 | 2023–present | Elected governor |
| Brian Kemp (R) | GA | 2010–2018 | 2019–present | Elected governor |
| Kate Brown (D) | OR | 2009–2015 | 2015–2023 | Succeeded governor |
| Chet Culver (D) | IA | 1999–2007 | 2007–2011 | Elected governor |
For the comparable pattern among other statewide officers, see our Lieutenant Governor 101 and Attorney General 101 pages.
The 2026 Elections
In 2026, 26 states will hold secretary of state elections. Republicans currently hold a narrow edge in the overall partisan balance, 25 to 22, though that count includes appointed officeholders who serve at the pleasure of their state's governor. Both parties have competitive targets.
The states most likely to produce competitive races are those where a presidential battleground meets a recently flipped or open SoS seat. Arizona, where Adrian Fontes (D) won narrowly in 2022, and Nevada, where Cisco Aguilar (D) flipped the seat from Republican that same year, are both top targets for Republicans. Georgia is worth watching because Brad Raffensperger (R) became one of the most nationally prominent secretaries of state after 2020 and his decision about whether to seek another term will shape the race. Wisconsin and Michigan, two states where SoS races drew heavy national spending in 2022, will again be contested.
Most states with elected secretaries of state hold elections in even-numbered years on a four-year cycle, so the 2026 competitive landscape largely mirrors the 2022 map. For detailed candidate information and race ratings as they develop, see our 2026 Secretary of State elections page.