The secretary of state’s office oversees official state records and helps manage state trust funds. Both candidates say they want the office to do more, but neither can expand its authority without approval from the Legislature.

Zamarripa says the office needs more staff and better digital access to its records. She has proposed increasing its workforce to five or six employees, describing the current operation as a small office in the Capitol basement with limited room to store records.

“We have to make sure we’re digitizing as much of the records as possible,” Zamarripa said, arguing that online records would be easier to preserve and make available to the public. She said she expects to begin with one staff member and would seek a larger budget to grow the office.

Schroeder’s central campaign issue is what he calls election integrity. He wants Wisconsin to assign election administration to the secretary of state, as he says 33 other states do, and abolish the bipartisan elections commission.

Asked whether he would have certified Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential results, Schroeder initially said he did not know enough to decide. He later said that, based on the information available, he would have certified the results if all avenues for resolving concerns had been exhausted.

The 2020 results withstood recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties, multiple court rulings, a state Supreme Court decision and an audit by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. Schroeder said, “The system worked.”

Zamarripa called her opponent’s proposal dangerous, saying she believes shifting election oversight to the secretary of state would undermine the state’s elections. She also said she would use the office as a platform to advocate for broader policy priorities, including driver’s licenses for undocumented Wisconsin residents.

The race is open because incumbent Democrat Sarah Godlewski is not seeking reelection. She is running for lieutenant governor on a ticket with David Crowley.