In the months before an election, Californians pay more attention than usual to decisions coming out of the secretary of state's office. But the race to fill that position often goes largely unnoticed.

That's likely to change this year, considering the field of possible challengers to Democratic incumbent Debra Bowen.

Former NFL player and self-described "recovering nonvoter" Damon Dunn and Orange County lawyer Orly Taitz, a leader of the so-called birther movement challenging President Barack Obama's citizenship, are competing for the Republican nomination in the June 8 primary. Both are first-time candidates for public office.

Dunn, 34, has a long list of GOP endorsements and more than $127,000 in campaign donations between Jan. 1 and his most recent filing on March 22. Taitz so far has not submitted any campaign filings and has publicized her campaign mainly through her blog.

Dunn already is showing a knack for political spin. The Irvine real estate developer never bothered to vote until the 2009 statewide special election—even missing the 2008 presidential election—yet is portraying his nearly nonexistent voting record as an asset. He said it will help him reach out to California's 6 million eligible but unregistered voters.

"My story is, 'Look, I was one of you, I've been there, and I know what it feels like to not have your vote count,"' he said. "I'm not saying it's right that I didn't vote all those years, but I can connect better with those who are not involved in the process."

Dunn believes his personal history also will resonate with California voters. After a childhood he says was spent living in "dire poverty" in a trailer with 10 people in Texas, he got a football scholarship to Stanford University, where he played wide receiver from 1994 to 1998. He then bounced around the NFL and the now-defunct XFL and NFL Europe leagues for a few years before co-founding a real estate company with his former college roommate in 2001.

"I think those are things that make me a good fit, particularly for public service," he said. "I carry a lot of the American experience—probably more than most people that are in Sacramento right now."

Asked how he would shake up the Capitol, Dunn has fixated on the secretary of state's responsibility for maintaining business filings. He said he would devote at least one full-time staff position to conducting "exit interviews" of companies leaving the state and then share that information with state lawmakers.

"To compete with other states—and even just to retain the businesses we have—we need to understand how many companies we're losing per sector, and why," he said.

Bowen, who served in the Legislature for 14 years, said she is puzzled by Dunn's proposal and thinks the money needed to fund such an undertaking could be better spent elsewhere.

"All this office can do is collect that information from companies, but then what?" she said.

Dunn and Bowen also disagree on one of the dominant issues of Bowen's first term as the state's chief elections officer: the use of electronic voting machines.

Shortly after taking office in 2007, Bowen commissioned a top-to-bottom review of machines throughout the state to identify problems and ensure accuracy. She then drew the fury of some county registrars by severely restricting use of some electronic voting machines just six months before the state's 2008 presidential primary.

The 54-year-old said the move was necessary to restore voter confidence in the integrity of the election process.

But Dunn said Bowen moved too quickly to discredit the machines, and that security can be achieved by controlling access to the machines both at polling places and during storage and transport.

If re-elected, Bowen said she would use the next four years to help various projects reach fruition.

Chief among those is VoteCal, which will consolidate the 58 county voter registration databases into one statewide system. The system, scheduled to be implemented next year, also will allow all voters with driver's licenses or state IDs to register and update their registration online.

Bowen acknowledges that some of her other goals, such as improving the Cal-Access campaign finance database, are impossible at the moment because of the state's budget crisis. The secretary of state's office has seen a 25 percent drop in funding since Bowen took office.

"Right now, we're doing everything on a shoestring," she said. "But I believe over the past three years I have done the work I have been hired to do, and even done it with a whole lot less money."

If Taitz manages to pull out a surprise victory in June, she likely will challenge Bowen's opposition to requiring photo ID's at the polls.

"I think it's important to make sure people who are voting or who are candidates are citizens and residents of the states where they are voting," said Taitz, 49, a native of the former Soviet Union and a naturalized U.S. citizen.

Bowen maintains that voter fraud in California is not widespread and that requiring IDs would disenfranchise elderly, low-income and rural voters, who are more likely than other groups not to have such documentation.

Taitz has worked zealously to expose perceived political conspiracies and fraud. She has filed so many lawsuits challenging Obama's citizenship that a federal court in Georgia issued a $20,000 sanction against her last year.

One of her lawsuits, in 2008, was filed against Bowen for allegedly failing to ascertain Obama's eligibility before placing him on the ballot. The case was dismissed in 2009.