CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A pre-Christmas visit to the office of Secretary of State Betty Ireland revealed no packing boxes, no recently bared wall space, no signs that the first woman ever elected to West Virginia's executive branch was entering the final weeks of her term.

Ireland instead had her hands full: putting the finishing touches on a new electronic system for legal process servers; steadily expanding the breadth of state agency rules available online; preparing to brief the Legislature on the year's busy election season.

She's also dealing with a pile of allegations from the Nov. 4 balloting that have been relayed to the fraud investigation unit she created after taking office in 2005.

"Typically, when a complaint comes in at this time in the process, it is from somebody who has lost an election, and who wants us to do something about it,'' Ireland said.

The day's tasks reflect the wide-ranging role that West Virginia's secretary of state plays -- as a key record-keeper, in aiding the flow of state commerce, and as its chief voting overseer.

The 63-year-old, who leaves office Jan. 18, also is keeping an eye to the future. Besides a long-postponed vacation with her husband ("Neither of us has had more than a week off at a time in 20 years, probably,'' she said), Ireland expects to remain involved with the state's Republican Party.

In a state where Democrats dominate most levels of government, Ireland is the only Republican since 1996 to win one of the six statewide elected executive branch offices that form the Board of Public Works.

"I have no concrete political plans,'' she said, adding that "if something opens up politically, and I choose to walk through a door, I may do that.''

Ireland's first post-office task is a tough one. She must settle the affairs of her parents, whose ailing health prompted her to sit out the 2008 election cycle as she cared for them.

Her father died in August 2007, and her mother followed in April. Ireland has held off sorting through the items left from the household the couple shared during 68 years of marriage.

"I look forward to the down time and the quiet time to really give that the attention that it needs, to honor their memories,'' Ireland said.

"The hardest thing that I had to do in this office was to manage this office and still manage the requirements and the demands on me as the daughter who took care of two aging parents, and then going through their final days with them,'' she said.

Ireland previously had headed the state Consolidated Public Retirement Board and was chief executive of consulting firm Jackson Kelly Solutions when she ran for secretary of state in 2004. She defeated Ken Hechler, a Democrat elder statesman who previously had held the office, with nearly 52 percent of the vote.

A daunting deadline greeted Ireland in her new post.

Congress had given states until Dec. 31 to reach benchmarks set by the Help America Vote Act, meant to end the problems that marred the 2000 elections. Ireland also had to wait until that April for state legislation that sketched out the finer points of the mandated changes.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A pre-Christmas visit to the office of Secretary of State Betty Ireland revealed no packing boxes, no recently bared wall space, no signs that the first woman ever elected to West Virginia's executive branch was entering the final weeks of her term.

Ireland instead had her hands full: putting the finishing touches on a new electronic system for legal process servers; steadily expanding the breadth of state agency rules available online; preparing to brief the Legislature on the year's busy election season.

She's also dealing with a pile of allegations from the Nov. 4 balloting that have been relayed to the fraud investigation unit she created after taking office in 2005.

"Typically, when a complaint comes in at this time in the process, it is from somebody who has lost an election, and who wants us to do something about it,'' Ireland said.

The day's tasks reflect the wide-ranging role that West Virginia's secretary of state plays -- as a key record-keeper, in aiding the flow of state commerce, and as its chief voting overseer.

The 63-year-old, who leaves office Jan. 18, also is keeping an eye to the future. Besides a long-postponed vacation with her husband ("Neither of us has had more than a week off at a time in 20 years, probably,'' she said), Ireland expects to remain involved with the state's Republican Party.

In a state where Democrats dominate most levels of government, Ireland is the only Republican since 1996 to win one of the six statewide elected executive branch offices that form the Board of Public Works.

"I have no concrete political plans,'' she said, adding that "if something opens up politically, and I choose to walk through a door, I may do that.''

Ireland's first post-office task is a tough one. She must settle the affairs of her parents, whose ailing health prompted her to sit out the 2008 election cycle as she cared for them.

Her father died in August 2007, and her mother followed in April. Ireland has held off sorting through the items left from the household the couple shared during 68 years of marriage.

"I look forward to the down time and the quiet time to really give that the attention that it needs, to honor their memories,'' Ireland said.

"The hardest thing that I had to do in this office was to manage this office and still manage the requirements and the demands on me as the daughter who took care of two aging parents, and then going through their final days with them,'' she said.

Ireland previously had headed the state Consolidated Public Retirement Board and was chief executive of consulting firm Jackson Kelly Solutions when she ran for secretary of state in 2004. She defeated Ken Hechler, a Democrat elder statesman who previously had held the office, with nearly 52 percent of the vote.

A daunting deadline greeted Ireland in her new post.

Congress had given states until Dec. 31 to reach benchmarks set by the Help America Vote Act, meant to end the problems that marred the 2000 elections. Ireland also had to wait until that April for state legislation that sketched out the finer points of the mandated changes.

"We had only eight months to come into full compliance with an extremely complex and technical set of federal laws,'' Ireland said. "We were one of only 26 states that were able to meet the deadline.''

Ireland leaves offices with all 1,887 of West Virginia's election precincts equipped with at least one machine that allows handicapped voters to cast their ballots on their own. All counties offer voting devices that leave paper trails to help ensure ballots are counted as they were cast.

She also rode herd over a 2008 election season that saw record-breaking registrations and early voting turnout, although Nov. 4's turnout numbers fell below that of 2004.

And amid a handful of complaints regarding touch-screen machines before the 2008 general election - from perhaps 15 out of 153,789 early voters - national groups touted Ireland's response.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and Verified Voting jointly sent letters to Ireland's counterparts around the country holding up her office's advice -- that counties recalibrate their machines daily and offer pencils or styluses for touch screens -- as "best practices.''

"This was definitely the best election that my office has had in conjunction with the secretary of state,'' said Mason County Clerk Diana Cromley, a four-term Democrat and board member of the West Virginia Association of Counties. "As her term progressed, and her team got more experienced with elections, I thought that, overall, they did an excellent job.''

As for her office's other roles, Ireland established a system for electronically recording when people are served with notices of legal proceedings. The state's 55 circuit clerks previously had been peppered, continuously, with green postcards that denote service.

"It's going to save us immense amounts of dollars,'' she said.

The electronic rule filing, meanwhile, will allow online tracking of changes proposed and debated for the hundreds of agency and program rules that spell out the day-to-day workings of state law. Such changes aim to embrace the Internet and the latest technology, and ease doing business in and with the state.

Ireland said they also were spurred partly by an unexpected discovery from when she first moved into 1900 Kanawha Boulevard.

"It dismays me, how we have to struggle to do modern-day, 21st-century business in a state Capitol that was built 75 years ago,'' she said. "Because this is a historically preserved building, we can't just knock out walls. There are things we just absolutely cannot do. It's not set up for modern business.''

Ireland remains mindful of the milestone that bears her name, as the first woman elected to the Board of Public Works, but said she rarely dwells on it.

"It's not my main deal to stand up and be the women's rights advocate,'' she said. "I am a women's rights advocate, but that's not what pushes me forward. I am here to do the job.''

She also hopes to help increase the ranks of GOP women in state politics, and encourage women generally by continuing her work with the Mississippi-based Stennis Center for Public Service.

"I shudder to think, how in the world can we have both sides of the human equation represented adequately, when we've just had one viewpoint,'' Ireland said, citing the dearth of women in West Virginia elected office. "We're very underrepresented.''