Elaine Marshall
American politician (born 1945)
Elaine Folk Marshall (born November 18, 1945) is an American attorney and politician who has served as the North Carolina Secretary of State since 1997. A member of the Democratic Party, she is the first woman to be elected to statewide office in North Carolina. Marshall was also the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for the United States Senate seat then held by Republican Richard Burr in the 2010 election. In 2020, Marshall was re-elected to a seventh term as North Carolina Secretary of State. In 2024, she was reelected to an eighth term winning with 51 percent of the vote.
Early life, education, and career
Marshall was born on November 18, 1945, in Lineboro, Maryland. Her father was a farmer who, for many years, served as a volunteer fire fighter and community leader, and her mother was the organist in the family's small rural church for more than 60 years. She attended public schools as a child and became the first person in her family to graduate college. She studied textiles at the University of Maryland from 1964 to 1968, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Textiles and Clothing. While at Maryland, she became a member of Alpha Gamma Delta.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Elaine Marshall” as american politician (born 1945). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american politician (born 1945). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1324820. VIAF identifies the subject as 482145857928123020000. The Library of Congress control number is no2016024289. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1945, 1997, 2010 and 2020.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Elaine Marshall” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.