How your secretary of state affects elections and why you should care

Correction: PBS NewsHour has reclassified Secretary of State-elect Phil McGrane after speaking with him and confirming he is an election defender. Find more here.

A once under-the-radar governmental role with significant control over elections is getting a lot more attention this year.

In 38 states, the secretary of state is the chief election official, a role required by federal law, often in charge of running and certifying elections of their local, state and national leaders – think county-level officials, governors and state legislators, plus U.S. senators and representatives. In 31 states, the secretary of state has to run for office, meaning they are not nonpartisan, but usually affiliated as Democrats or Republicans.

READ MORE: Who runs elections in your state? Use our map to find out

While experts say the vast majority of secretaries of state are impartial, people who study American democracy warn that a new batch of candidates who deny the results of the 2020 election are calling that impartiality into question.

PBS NewsHour examined candidates’ campaign ads, interviews, tweets, lawsuits they joined, and more over the last two years to classify their actions as one of three categories: Denies results (expressly pushed claims of fraud or the idea of a stolen election); Fuels doubt (raised questions about potential cases of voter fraud or have pushed concerns about election integrity); Defends results (defended the results and integrity of the 2020 election).

Former President Donald Trump’s false claims and failed lawsuits over the outcome of the 2020 presidential race have helped spur misinformation about the integrity of U.S. elections and inspire dozens of more restrictive voting laws around the nation. Election officials and workers have been the target of harassment, intimidation and threats. These baseless claims have also been repeated on the campaign trail this year.

WATCH: Rep. Liz Cheney says Trump knew ‘his election fraud claims were false’

President Joe Biden on Tuesday lambasted the harm these “lies” have caused, especially in undermining the faith of the electorate.

“This intimidation, this violence against Democrats, Republicans and nonpartisan officials just doing their jobs, are the consequence of lies told for power and profit, lies of conspiracy and malice, lies repeated over and over to generate a cycle of anger, hate, vitriol and even violence,” Biden said in a speech. He argued that candidates who deny the results of the 2020 election, or who are complicit while others deny the results, are a threat to democracy.

Out of the 27 races for secretary of state this year, only six GOP candidates for the role – including Brad Raffensperger in Georgia, who defied Trump’s pressure over the election results in that state – have defended the 2020 election results. Dozens of GOP candidates running for secretary of state this cycle, however, have raised doubts or outright denied the results of the 2020 election.

Secretaries of state “are elected on partisan agendas. And then we expect them to come into office and act like nonpartisan administrators,” said Jeremy Gruber, senior vice president of Open Primaries, an organization advocating for open, nonpartisan primary systems and independent voters. “And that's not how they're elected and that's not how they're incentivized to act if they're going to continue to get reelected.”

As Election Day approaches, here’s what secretaries of state do, why people should care about who fills this role and the danger of having a hyper-partisan chief election officer.

What does a secretary of state do?

The United States has a decentralized election system, which means that every state runs its own elections and the duties performed by the secretary of state (SoS) vary from place to place. In states where the SoS is the chief election officer, they control nearly every aspect of how elections are run, including certifying elections, ensuring all state and federal election laws are followed by local officials, maintaining the state’s voter registration database, publishing election manuals that direct how local officials run elections and investigating allegations of voting-related improprieties.

WATCH: The critical role secretaries of state will play in midterm elections

In some states, they also perform non-election roles. They can oversee business licenses, or, as in Arizona, be first-in-line successors to the governorship. The Texas secretary of state, publishes the government’s rules and regulations, authorizes people as notaries public and acts as a senior advisor on border issues and relations with Mexico.

When the job doubles as the state’s chief election officer, the SoS has a lot of sway over how elections are run, said Kevin Johnson, co-founder and executive director at Election Reformers Network, an organization that advocates for making elections nonpartisan.

Secretaries of state can influence which issues become ballot measures and how they are described, Johnson said. And as the public face of a state’s election procedures, they also can strengthen – or weaken – trust in the election process.

Why should I care about my secretary of state?

Knowing your SoS can help you better understand your state’s election procedures, making you a more informed voter. Though the SoS might not be your state’s chief election officer, one official’s actions can have state- and even national impact.

For example, Maine was the first state to enact same-day voter registration in 1973. A process run by their secretary of state, same-day registration – offered in 22 states and D.C. – allows voters to register and vote at the same time. This often correlates with stronger voter turnout in state and federal elections.

Your state’s SoS website is one resource where you can find services like online voter registration, office announcements and contact information, to help you write to, call or visit your secretary to voice concerns or questions.

Keeping up with your secretary of state’s policy actions, especially those election-related decisions, can help ensure accountability, Gruber said.

What could happen if an election denier becomes secretary of state (or governor)?

It’s very unlikely that a rogue secretary of state alone could actually overturn the results of an election, or even refuse to certify the results, said Thom Reilly, co-director of the Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University.

That’s because, just as U.S. elections are decentralized, they’re also chock full of checks and balances. Many states have entities other than their chief election officer, such as local boards, that certify elections, said Reilly, who is also a professor at the School of Public Affairs at ASU.

“They can sure put a kink in it,” he said. “But they can’t single-handedly stop it. There’s other types of checking policies.”

PBS NewsHour examined candidates’ campaign ads, interviews, tweets, lawsuits they joined, and more over the last two years to classify their actions as one of three categories: Denies results (expressly pushed claims of fraud or the idea of a stolen election); Fuels doubt (raised questions about potential cases of voter fraud or have pushed concerns about election integrity); Defends results (defended the results and integrity of the 2020 election).

What’s more likely is that a SoS could use their power to undermine faith in elections.

“We've never had so many individuals who are running openly as questioning the whole process. And although they single-handedly can't do away with early voting or voting by machines or some of these other mechanisms, they can have more influence in the process and they can create a good deal of doubt,” Reilly said.

The worry is that people will start to think of the role of secretary of state, and the duties of running elections, as explicitly partisan. And when people believe elections are run by partisans, they may not see the election – or its results – as impartial.

“It's beyond the danger [of denial]. It's a bigger danger that people will see the person in charge as not a neutral referee, but instead as someone playing for one team,” Johnson said.

Most other democracies operate elections with nonpartisan officials, Johnson said. And most American secretaries of state do operate impartially, both he and Reilly said.

Election Reformers Network has found that that’s what voters want. When they asked voters how important it was for them that election officials act impartially, more than 80 percent said it was very important, Johnson said, including the vast majority of both Democrats and Republicans.