Biography
As Ohio’s first woman to serve as secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner brings a unique perspective and exceptional credentials to be Ohio’s top election official. Her prior service as Legislative Counsel for the Secretary of State’s Office, 13 years of election law private practice experience, her years of service as a Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge, a past experience as a member of the Franklin County Board of Elections and work as a special prosecutor for election fraud clearly demonstrate her ability to be an effective and fair Secretary of State.
Jennifer Brunner has pledged elections for Ohio that are free, fair, open and honest. She has made it a top goal to ensure confidence in Ohio’s elections. Among her stated four goals for office are to ensure business filings that are quick, efficient and easy to retrieve, to protect social security numbers from disclosure and create and to maintain a life quality index to better the lives of all Ohioans.
Brunner received a B.A. in sociology-gerontology, cum laude, from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio and later a J.D. from Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio with honors. She and her husband, Rick, also an attorney, have three adult children and live in Columbus.
In 2008, Brunner was awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, the nation's most prestigious honor for elected public servants.
Key accomplishments since taking office in January 2007 include,
- Delivery of a successful & efficient March Presidential Primary in 2008 with a record turnout of 45%, accomplished mainly by improved communication and providing hands-on instruction to Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections and the state’s thousands of poll workers.
- Completion of a massive review of the state’s voting systems for security, reliability and operational changes. Brunner advocates a move to paper ballots in Ohio to address security and performance deficiencies pending the development of improved technology.
- Creation of the Voting Right Institute (VRI) to provide great voter access to Ohio elections. The VRI has developed “Grads Vote,” a program to provide voter registration forms to every graduating high school senior, has secured private foundation funding to work with the U.S. Postal Service to include voter registration forms in government moving packets and has partnered with the Overseas Vote Foundation to make voting access easier through online absentee ballot applications for overseas and military voters.
- Consolidation of resources and the return of outsourced jobs to the office to improve customer service and accountability.
- Redaction of private information such as social security numbers from millions of online records and work with the legislature to save costs by preventing the filing of private information with the office.