She told the group that many of them had been in the news more than they should have been, and they had often been the scapegoat for much that had gone wrong.  She pledged that her office would be accessible and that there were no secrets.  She assured the large audience of board of election officials that she would communicate vital information with timely and clear directives, and that she has hired more in-house legal staff to help with that task.

She has also hired technical staff to make sure the voting systems are secure and maintained in a consistent way, and that there is not so much dependence on the outside vendors.  Additionally, she has hired 14 field reps to be liaisons with the local boards of elections.  

To increase citizen input and participation she is developing a Voting Rights Institute which will be made up of election reform groups and voting activists.  It will serve in an ombudsman capacity to bring issues and concerns from the public sector for discussion and resolve.

There was lots of murmuring in the crowd when she mentioned a possible solution for getting more poll workers, which she described as working like selecting a jury pool.  And there was some questioning about her possible plan to do issue-only elections by mail.  

In Ann Fisher's Columbus Dispatch article today on legislating ethics, she states that it is the "spirit" (of the law) that really counts, and praises Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner for declining to attend "fancy parties" last week put on by voting-machine vendors at the Ohio Association of Election Officials winter conference.  Brunner also banned her employees from attending.

This all sounds like a vast improvement over the tenure of former Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, however, the question still remains whether partisan administration of our elections is preferable to a non-partisan or independent model.