In state politics, the most enviable marker of power is the so-called “triplex.” To achieve a triplex, a political party must sweep the state’s three most influential offices. The first two are the governor and attorney general positions, the former due to extensive executive powers and the latter due to their power to sue the federal government. But it is the third and most frequently overlooked member of the triplex who may have the most influence over democracy: the secretary of state.
The duties of the secretary of state encompass serving as the state’s chief election official, along with such administrative duties as permitting and business authentication. Because of their role in the electoral process, secretaries of state have critical influence over who can vote and how easy it is to do so.
“A chief election official must do three things: make sure only eligible voters vote, make sure every eligible voter has the opportunity to vote, and make sure that every eligible voter meets convenience at the polls and during the registration process,” said Jason Kander in an interview with the HPR. Kander, who served as Missouri’s Secretary of State from 2013 to 2017, is the founder of the voting rights group Let America Vote.
As the nation enters a divisive debate over voting rights and alleged voter fraud, these officials may be the last line of defense against laws that disenfranchise American voters. Yet not all secretaries of state have taken up this mission with verve. Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group, said in an interview with the HPR that “in a perfect world, all secretaries of state would be dedicated to ensuring that the franchise is as widely available as possible and is fair. So often now, that is not the orientation of many secretaries of state.”
Thus, the outcomes of the 26 secretary of state elections in 2018 are poised to have direct effects on elections to come. A look at some of the key races in the coming year indicates that Democrats are on track to seize back the secretary of state office in several critical states, potentially permanently altering the electoral landscape in the process.
Melee in motor country
The state of Michigan is, by most accounts, ancestrally Democratic. Nonetheless, Democrats have struggled to capture even menial power within Michigan’s state-level apparatus. Donald Trump’s narrow capture of Michigan in the 2016 presidential election solidified a new normal in the Great Lakes State—one in which Democrats are no longer presumptive favorites for statewide victories.
Nonetheless, Democrats are feeling optimistic about their 2018 chances in the state, hoping their nominees will be bolstered by the unpopularity of term-limited Republican Governor Rick Snyder, who has faced questions about his management of the Flint water crisis. After being shut out of the executive branch for eight years, the Democratic Party sees the open secretary of state seat as a prime opportunity for takeover.
In 2010, term-limited Secretary Ruth Johnson, a Republican, was elected by a relatively narrow 5.5 percentage points while Snyder was elected to his first term as governor by nearly a 20-point margin. Johnson’s Democratic opponent in the general election, Jocelyn Benson, had a unique qualification for the secretary of state position: she wrote the book on it. In her 2010 book, State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process, Benson emphasized the tremendous power of the office. “Students of democracy can simply not ignore the significant role that a state secretary of state, if given the authority over elections, plays in consistently overseeing, interpreting, and implementing election laws and democratic principles in their state,” she wrote.
Eight years later, Benson is back for a second try at the office, and she believes her experience as a law school dean, non-profit CEO, and legal expert will set her apart from the field of Republicans looking to succeed Johnson. While three candidates are currently vying for the Republican nomination, raising the possibility of a damaging contested primary, Benson is as of yet unopposed in the Democratic primary and has quickly secured the endorsements of top party officials.
The debate over voter ID laws is expected to feature heavily in the race, especially after the Michigan House made its ID laws even more stringent in 2016. Under the House bill, voters without proper photo identification will not be able to cast even a provisional ballot with a signed affidavit, an option taken by over 18,000 voters in the 2016 presidential election. Controversially, the bill is expected to have an outsized impact on Wayne County, which contains a large proportion of the state’s black population and the overwhelmingly Democratic city of Detroit.]
For critics of voter ID laws, the Michigan crackdown represents a new development in a long legacy of disenfranchising minority voters. “It seems clear from the record in North Carolina and Texas that voter ID laws have been enacted with oftentimes discriminatory intent, particularly to suppress the votes of poor people and people of color,” said Cohen. Kander, who opposed a 2016 Missouri referendum instituting a similar ID law, criticized ID laws more generally as a partisan suppression tactic, saying that “the Trump Administration and national Republicans are not going to back down from making voter suppression a key part of their strategy to win elections.” While the law’s proponents defend it as necessary to safeguard the integrity of the polls, its future may be on the line as election season ramps up.
The Arizona blame game
March 22, 2016, was not Secretary Michele Reagan’s night. During the day, Arizona’s presidential primary was plagued by long wait lines, with some voters turning around and going home in frustration. “They reduced the number of polling places by more than 50 percent from the last presidential preference election,” explained Katie Hobbs in an interview with the HPR. “I think a second grader could have looked at that and said, ‘That doesn’t look like enough polling places.’ And yet [Reagan] approved that plan.” Hobbs, Arizona’s Senate minority leader, declared her candidacy to be the Democratic nominee for secretary of state in March 2017.
Later that primary night, as results from precincts began pouring in, Reagan’s highly touted project to digitally display election results as they were finalized crashed and burned, with nothing to see on the webpage but an error message. Reagan had joked earlier that she would either be celebrating with a bottle of champagne or crying with a bottle of Jack Daniels depending on the success of the project; it seems a safe bet that Reagan pursued the latter recourse.
Reagan, a Republican, is by almost all accounts the most vulnerable incumbent secretary of state on the ballot in 2018. Prevailing by barely four points in 2014, Reagan’s performance has been plagued by misstep after misstep, with various election-related crises derailing her first term. Perhaps the most prominent scandal Reagan has endured was her failure to mail informational brochures to over 200,000 households ahead of the 2016 election. In the wake of the debacle, Arizona’s attorney general appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the case. Prosecutor Michael Morrissey found that Reagan knew about the failure to mail the pamphlets two weeks prior to when she notified the public, violating a state law provisioning that electoral pamphlets be sent to homes prior to the start of early voting. While Morrissey’s investigation concluded that Reagan displayed incompetence, it did not recommend indictment or prove criminal intent.
While some have called for Reagan to be impeached or recalled following her blunders, Arizona’s political observers expect she will remain in office unless the voters decide to cast her aside. Reagan will first have to survive the Republican primary in August, and while no one has stepped up to challenge her as of the end of 2017, several individuals are considering it, including wealthy businessman Steve Gaynor, Republican National Committeeperson Lori Klein Corbin, and former State Senate President Steve Pierce.
Whoever emerges from the Republican primary will face a stiff challenge from Hobbs, who has positioned herself as an outspoken advocate for voting rights. Hobbs has committed to making it easier for ex-felons to regain their voting rights after serving their sentences, saying, “it’s easier for a felon to have their gun rights restored than their voting rights restored. That is absolutely unacceptable. If we have in our laws a consequence for a crime and a person has paid that consequence, they should have their rights fully restored.” On the national debate over voter fraud, Hobbs celebrated the dissolution of Trump’s voter fraud panel: “when cases of voter fraud are less frequent than cases of people being struck by lightning, it’s ridiculous to make these claims [of fraud].”
Arizona’s secretary of state is particularly powerful because they serve as the executive branch’s second-in-command, and are elevated to the governorship in the case of a vacancy. If Hobbs were to unseat Reagan, she would thus become the most powerful Democrat in the state government since Governor Janet Napolitano left office in 2009.
Fortify the red, hide in the blue
While Michigan and Arizona stand at the forefront of Democrats’ takeover opportunities, the party is intent on contesting seats even in ruby-red states. In Georgia, no Democrat has won a statewide open seat since 1998. In 2018, the race for secretary of state may offer Democrats their best chance to clinch a statewide victory in 20 years, with former Congressman John Barrow making an unexpected bid for the seat. Barrow, who represented a solidly conservative district in the House of Representatives from his initial election in 2004 until his defeat in the 2014 Republican wave, is making his moderate credentials central to his campaign. “When I left the House I was the most bipartisan member of Congress from either side of the aisle running for reelection that year,” said Barrow in an interview with the HPR. “I think that bipartisanship is virtually a prerequisite for this job.” Barrow’s proven record of winning tough races will likely serve him well in a state trending toward Democrats.
In addition to bipartisanship, Barrow identified even-handedness as a key quality to have in a secretary of state: “Folks want someone who will administer elections on the up and square.” And on the issue of restoring voters’ confidence in their polling locations, he emphasizes taking decisive action to revamp election infrastructure rather than the escalation of partisan debates over voter fraud. “Nobody today uses the same phone that they used in 2002,” said Barrow. “And yet in our elections, we’re using not only the same hardware but the same software that we were using back in 2002. The technology to cheat has long since outstripped that generation’s technology to keep cheaters out. That’s why we need a wholesale overhaul of our election technology in Georgia.”
In sharp contrast to strong Democratic recruitment in red states, several Democratic incumbents are as of yet going unchallenged in traditionally blue states. Secretary Denise Merrill of Connecticut, who from 2015 to 2017 served as the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, stood at the forefront of a frosty reception to Trump’s now-disbanded voter fraud commission, which was chaired by another secretary of state: Republican firebrand Kris Kobach of Kansas. Merrill, a Democrat first elected in 2010, pushed back on Kobach’s requests for private voter information, denigrating his “lengthy record of illegally disenfranchising eligible voters in Kansas.” While Merrill’s 2014 reelection was closer than expected, with the incumbent winning by a narrow four points, she had not drawn a single Republican challenger as of the end of 2017, raising the possibility that Merrill will simply get a pass come the general election.
The yawning gap in recruitment and energy between the two parties could reshape the political landscape heading into the 2020 presidential election, especially with the coming census and redistricting on the horizon. Despite early advantages, Democratic challengers in closely divided states will face tough campaigns against capable opponents. Kander, who himself was in a similar position ahead of the 2012 elections, had this advice for his fellow Democrats as they craft their arguments: “It’s very simple—no matter who you are going to vote for and no matter who you’ve voted for in the past, if you are an eligible voter we’re going to do everything we can to make sure you meet nothing but convenience in the process.”
With sweeping powers over electoral matters, secretaries of state may be the most critical power-brokers in the important debate over whether voting in America is a right or a privilege. “No one would talk about your right to bear arms as a privilege,” said Cohen. “No one would say that your right to not be subjected to an illegal search or seizure is a privilege. The question is, are we going to continue on the path of making the franchise more universal, or are we going to go backwards?”