What’s the role of a state’s Secretary of State?

The Secretary of State (or, in the cases of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia, the Secretary of the Commonwealth) is an official in 47 of the 50 state governments who is either elected at the general election or appointed by the governor.

In Alaska, Hawaii and Utah, states that do not have a Secretary of State, the duties of Secretary of State fall upon the Lieutenant Governor.

These duties vary from one state to the next, but they can—and often do—involve the following:

• serving as the state’s chief elections official;
  
applying the Uniform Commercial Code to ensure business contracts and practices are uniform across the nation;

• chartering businesses; keeping all records within the state (state’s constitution, formal copies of legislation, executive orders, state regulatory agency regulations and interpretations and in some states, civil acts and land transactions and ownership records);
  
• issuing professional licenses;
  
• issuing driver’s licenses;
  
• regulating the activities of lobbyists;
  
• maintaining the state museum;
  
• maintaining the state’s historical records;
  
• monitoring the use of public property;
  
• administering pardons (in some states this only means affixing the state seal to the governor’s proclamation, in others, it involves sitting on the Board of Pardons alongside the governor);
  
• administering notaries public;
  
• encouraging commercial relations with other countries;
  
• and keeping and deciding where to affix the official state seal.

For more information about your state’s Secretary of State’s duties, access Wikipedia’s listing of all 47. The names in blue also feature articles about individual Secretaries. If you have information about your state’s Secretary of State that you can provide to Wikipedia, please visit their articles for creation page.