Meet Susan

Susan Bysiewicz is Connecticut's 72nd Secretary of the State. First elected in 1998, and then re-elected in 2002 and 2006, Secretary Bysiewicz is the chief elections official and business registrar for the State of Connecticut.

Throughout her tenure, Secretary Bysiewicz has transformed her office through the innovative use of technology. Among her accomplishments, she led the nation in implementing the CONCORD system to allow for searches about the more than 340,000 companies registered to do business in Connecticut. Secretary Bysiewicz also created the Connecticut Voter Registration System to streamline voter registration, protect voter rights, and prevent voter fraud. Secretary Bysiewicz has also worked to ensure that confidential personal data within her agency is protected or altogether eliminated from the public domain. She won passage of a law to remove all social security numbers from voter registration rolls.

In 2004, Secretary Bysiewicz also created the "Safe at Home/Address Confidentiality" program which protects victims of domestic violence and sexual assault by keeping their addresses confidential. As the state's business registrar, Secretary Bysiewicz has worked to enhance and provide efficient customer service to the business community. In 2000, she also created the CTShowcase initiative which encourages the development of more small and minority-owned businesses through events, roundtable discussions, and seminars.

As chief elections official, Secretary Bysiewicz's top priority has been to ensure that our voting process is fully reliable, secure, and private for all voters. Before the 2008 Presidential election, she oversaw the statewide implementation of both optical scan voting and vote-by-phone technology that allows all individuals to vote privately and independently. To promote voter registration and participation in every election, Secretary Bysiewicz worked with community organizations, schools and others to implement voter registration drives and encourage civic engagement. More than 300,000 new voters registered in 2008 and Connecticut had its highest voter turnout figure since 1992. Secretary Bysiewicz also led the successful drive to amend Connecticut’s constitution to allow 17 year-olds to vote in primaries which could result in more than 10,000 more people at the polls.

From 1993 to 1999, Secretary Bysiewicz represented the 100th Assembly District in the State House of Representatives. In that capacity, she also served as House Chair of the Government Administration and Elections Committee. A graduate of Yale College and Duke University School of Law, she has practiced corporate, international, banking, health care, and pension law at several area firms. While in law school, Secretary Bysiewicz authored the book Ella: A Biography of Governor Ella Grasso. A native of Middletown, she continues to reside there with her husband David Donaldson and their three children. Secretary Bysiewicz is also the granddaughter of Polish and Greek immigrants, and the first Polish-American and Greek-American to be elected to statewide constitutional office in Connecticut.