Priest was born on September 12, 1947, in
Montreal,
Quebec. She worked in Canada with a distributor for the American company Munsey Products before moving to
Little Rock, Arkansas, upon her marriage in 1974. During this time period, Priest started her political career as a member of the
board of directors (
city council) for Little Rock in 1986. For the city, she was the
deputy mayor of Little Rock from 1989 to 1990 and reappointed to the board of directors in 1990. Running as a
Democrat in 1994, Priest beat Julia Hughes Jones to become the
Secretary of State of Arkansas. With her win, Priest became the first woman to take office as Secretary of State of Arkansas as the result of an election. Priest was reelected as Arkansas's Secretary of State in 1998, defeating candidate Rose Bryant Jones. She remained as Secretary of State for Arkansas until 2003. and also reduced the cost of photocopies of information held in the Secretary of State's offices from 80c per page to 25c per page. She attempted to boost the number of people voting in elections through programs such as "Honor a Vet with a Vote", designed to raise awareness "that voting is a precious right", During 2000, she visited all counties of Arkansas to encourage participation in the
federal census, after estimates that around 42,000 residents of Arkansas were omitted from the
1990 US census, resulting in a loss of $280,000,000 in federal funding. Priest also served as president of the
National Association of Secretaries of State, and chaired a committee of the association which investigated possible election reforms at the national level, Within Arkansas, Priest also wanted to change the method of tracking ballots, so that they would no longer be linked to individual voters. However, the proposed electoral reforms foundered due to a downturn in the economy, In the late 2010s, Priest became a bookkeeper for a plumbing company run by her son. ==References==