Talk:Tennessee Secretary of State

First sentence
Could someone pease reword this? I'm sure we can do better than this. Rags (talk) 01:26, 26 March 2017 (UTC) Rags (talk) 01:26, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Duties
Being elected by the general assembly does not make the secretary a part of the legislative branch. Many members of various branches of government are chosen by other branches. This is part of the separation of and balance of powers. Many judges, including supreme court judges, are chosen by a different branch, for instance the President. A judge appointed by the President, and then confirmed by the legislative branch, is still a member of the judiciary, NOT the executive or the legislative. It is less clear in the Secretary's case, as he/she is somewhat autonomous, but he acts as an executive, an administrator, however he attained his office. He answers to the governor, primarily, and is a part of his administration. I have also seen this malarky on one of the tn.gov pages. The more you read, the more hoakum you will find.

Legislators create law by writing bills. Separation of powers allows neither the governor, sec of state, nor any other of the executive branch to write law. Neither is any member of the judiciary allowed to write law. Judges create precedent by their rulings, and this is called making law, but it is intrepretation of existing law, already codified. An executive's job is to carry out, or to enforce, the law. That is the job of the secretary of state. He could be arguably classified as judiciary, but never legislative. Rags (talk) 02:29, 26 March 2017 (UTC)