COLUMBUS — Ohio's secretary of state is often judged by the success of the last presidential election. By that measure, Maryellen O'Shaughnessy said she believes Jennifer Brunner has done a great job.

But Ms. Brunner isn't on the ballot. Ms. O'Shaughnessy is, and she was late out of the gate as Democrats scrambled to get behind a candidate to hold onto the office when Ms. Brunner launched her ill-fated campaign for the U.S. Senate rather than seek re-election.

“Have I had to work double time …? Absolutely, I have, but I knew I was going to have to do that, and we are doing that,” Ms. O'Shaughnessy said. “What it's meant is that I'm going to crest at the right time.”

The Franklin County clerk of courts and former Columbus city councilman faces Republican Jon Husted, a suburban Dayton state senator and former speaker of the Ohio House, and Libertarian Charles Earl, a former Republican state representative from Bowling Green.

Ms. O'Shaughnessy, 60, and the Ohio Democratic Party are counting on the strength of the O'Shaughnessy name in central Ohio to help her overcome the advantages of Mr. Husted's campaign war chest. Her great-grandfather, who first ran for the Ohio House in 1910, worked to create the Columbus waterworks with a dam now bearing his name. Her father was in the Ohio Senate. A licensed funeral director, she continues to run the family funeral home founded 125 years ago.

Her name has appeared frequently on central Ohio ballots. She was elected three times to Columbus council and once as Franklin County clerk of courts, but she's also had failed attempts for county commissioner and Congress.

“Columbus City Council here is a very high-profile position,” Ms. O'Shaughnessy said. “One of the reasons that it's so high-profile is that we're all at-large, so we actually represent more people than a congressional district. We're on TV frequently, once or twice a week. That bleeds out into all 22 counties in the central Ohio media market.”

In addition to overseeing Ohio elections, the secretary of state handles incorporation and other business filings and, next year, will have a seat on the powerful once-in-a-decade apportionment board that will redraw state House and Senate districts.

“It's about our precious right to vote,” Ms. O'Shaughnessy said. “It didn't take me emotionally, psychologically, or intellectually very long to get my brain around this [run].”

She praises Ms. Brunner's performance in office.

“If you take the 2004 election and put it up against the 2008 election, I think you'll see a dramatic difference,” Ms. O'Shaughnessy said.

“I think she was the right person at the right time, having election law experience. And I think I'm the right person at the right time now because we need a good solid administrator who has local government background to be able to continue to move the office forward,” she said.

Both she and Mr. Husted want to get rid of the so-called “Golden Week,” a five-day overlap between the voter registration deadline and the absentee ballot-early voting window that has allowed some would-be voters to simultaneously register and cast an absentee ballot on the same day.

She said she also wants to simplify the absentee ballot process so that fewer applications and ballots are disqualified because of minor errors.

Although she believes that the voter registration error rate under Ms. Brunner has been low, the state was criticized during the 2008 election for its slow pace in developing a database that can be cross-referenced with other state and federal information to catch errors and fraud.

“I believe we have an opportunity to interface with the Ohio vital statistics databases as well … but we have to be careful that we're not disenfranchising people who aren't dead,” she said.

She also said the state must reduce its reliance on provisional ballots, paper ballots of last resort that are only counted after the voters' eligibility is verified.

“I've been distressed to hear from people that in some precincts provisional balloting can be up to 25 percent, because what happens is poll workers who are uncertain what to do just hand them a provisional ballot,” she said.

First Published October 24, 2010, 2:38 a.m.