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Tennessee Secretary of State
Political office of the state government of Tennessee From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Tennessee Secretary of State is an office created by the Tennessee State Constitution. The Secretary of State is responsible for many of the administrative aspects of the operation of the state government of Tennessee. The current Secretary of State is Tre Hargett.
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Selection process
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According to the Tennessee Constitution of 1870, the Secretary of State is to be elected to a four-year term by the General Assembly in a joint convention. "Joint convention" means that the 99 state Representatives and 33 state Senators sit as a single body and cast individual votes. A majority of the 132 votes (67) is thus required for election. As this office is elected on a partisan basis, this means that the party having an overall majority of members in the two houses will elect its nominee secretary of state. Since Reconstruction, in Tennessee this invariably resulted in the secretary of state being a Democrat until 2009, when the Republicans gained the majority of seats in the General Assembly. The election of the secretary of state occurs in the cycle opposite to that of the election of the governor of Tennessee; in other words the term of the Tennessee Secretary of State is roughly coincident with that of the President of the United States, generally beginning and ending only a few days earlier.
Tennessee's method of selection stands in contrast to that of nearly all other U.S. states, where the secretary of state is generally either popularly elected on a statewide basis or appointed by the governor of the state. In contrast to the practice of some states, in Tennessee the secretary of state is not high in the order of succession to the governorship; the speakers of the Senate and House are the first two in line.
Secretary of State is one of only three state "constitutional officers" other than governor under the Tennessee Constitution; most other states have more. In contrast to this office, the other two, the State Treasurer and the Comptroller of the Treasury, are elected by the joint convention to two-year terms. There are no constitutional limits on the number of terms to which a person can be elected to any of these offices. The agency headed by the secretary of state is officially styled the "Tennessee Department of State".
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Duties
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As the secretary of state is elected by the legislature, the secretary of state's office is considered to be part of the legislative branch, not the executive branch, of government in Tennessee.[1] Duties of the secretary of state's office include the chartering of corporations, the registration of trademarks and service marks, and the administration of elections. The secretary of state also publishes the biennial Tennessee Blue Book, the official guide to all three branches of Tennessee State Government, and other state publications, including the publication of all public and private acts enacted by the General Assembly. The secretary of state is further charged with the regulation of charitable solicitations, as well as the operations of the state library and archives. The office also provides administrative law judges to conduct hearings and mediations to resolve disputes between the government and citizens, and civic engagement programming that includes the Civics Essay Contest, Anne Dallas Dudley Award program, College Voter Registration Competition, and Student Mock Election. All are part of the office’s longstanding efforts to prepare students to become and remain actively engaged citizens. Through the Safe at Home program, victims of domestic abuse, stalking, human trafficking, and other sexual offenses can obtain a substitute address to keep their identity concealed from public records. The Department's Tennessee Businesses Against Trafficking program provides businesses and their employees with no-cost, in-person, or virtual training to help identify the warning signs of human trafficking, as well as a roadmap to trained professionals with the Human Trafficking Hotline to report suspected criminal activity. Additionally, the Department of State is the primary records management agency for the state of Tennessee and provides professional consultative and analytical records management leadership to agencies.
The secretary of state collects an annual salary of $222,252, making them the highest-remunerated secretary of state in the country.[2]
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In history
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According to some historians, during the American Civil War, Secretary of State Edward H. East succeeded to the governorship when Andrew Johnson, who had served as military governor, became Vice President of the United States on March 4, 1865, and served as governor until April 5, when William "Parson" Brownlow was inaugurated as governor. The official Tennessee Blue Book, published by the secretary of state's office, does not include East on its list of governors. As the Tennessee General Assembly ceased to meet during the Civil War and much of the ordinary process of government ceased effective function in the state, East had been appointed Secretary of State by Johnson. Those who recognize East's governorship do so on the theory that he was the highest-ranking remaining state official once Johnson had become Vice President.[citation needed]
Joe C. Carr served as secretary of state on three occasions for a total of 27 years in the office, making him the longest-serving secretary; in addition, his wife held the office while he was in military service during World War II.[3] As secretary of state and thus the official responsible for conducting elections in the state, he was the nominal defendant in the famous 1962 Supreme Court case Baker v. Carr, in which the Supreme Court held that Congressional and legislative districts had to be of substantially equal populations in order to comply with the "equal protection" provision of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (the so-called "one man one vote" decision). (Carr's name as defendant was merely ex officio; the General Assembly, not the secretary of state, was responsible for setting the district boundaries, Carr's responsibility was to publish the resulting map and conduct elections accordingly.)
In the 1970s and 1980s the secretary of state's office was given the responsibility for issuing and administering bingo licenses. An investigation into irregularities in the issuance of these licenses (Operation Rocky Top) resulted in several indictments and the suicide of then-Secretary of State Gentry Crowell. As a result, bingo was made illegal in Tennessee, which it remains, except that it has been legal as an annual fundraising event for a recognized 501c(19) war veteran's organization since a 2014 amendment to the state constitution.
The current secretary of state, Tre Hargett, has served since January 2009. He had previously served as Minority Leader in the Tennessee House of Representatives.
List of past secretaries of state
The following have held the office of Secretary of State in Tennessee:[4][5]
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See also
References
External links
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