Secretary of State Glenda Hood, who was tapped to restore confidence in Florida's maligned election system following the 2000 debacle but still faced criticism for decisions many saw as slanted by partisanship, resigned Tuesday.

Hood said she wanted to explore new opportunities and return home to her family after nearly three years as the state's top elections official. She declined to say whether she had specific plans but didn't rule out a future run for political office.

"All of my family is in Orlando," said Hood. "It's time to be with them."

Hood, 55, a Republican and former Orlando mayor, was named by Gov. Jeb Bush in 2002 to take over the agency that oversees elections. She became the first person to hold the secretary of state position after Florida voters changed the constitution to make it an appointed rather than elected cabinet post.

She was praised for helping Florida recover from the disputed 2000 presidential election, which was marred by problems with punch-card ballots, but also was criticized for her handling of the purging of felons from the voter rolls.

Hood also found herself defending against lawsuits over the election process and accusations she tried to slant the 2004 presidential race in Republicans' favor.

As secretary of state, Hood helped introduce touch-screen voting in Florida, an effort to prevent a repeat of the punch-card ballot woes of the 2000 presidential election that led to recounts and a Supreme Court ruling, finally ending with George W. Bush as president.

Hood said she was most proud of her work overseeing the intensely scrutinized 2004 election, the first presidential race after the disputed 2000 contest between Bush and Al Gore. Her predecessor, Katherine Harris, was accused of taking a partisan role in the election that Bush eventually won by 537 votes.

Florida overhauled its election system after that, replacing the villified punchcard ballot machines with electronic or scanner systems. But the 2002 Democratic gubernatorial primary had problems too, with polls opening late and many precincts having problems operating new machines.

While Hood didn't oversee the 2002 governor's race, she was in charge for the presidential election in 2004, just a few months after nearly every part of the state was hit by at least one hurricane.

Despite a widely-praised transition to touchscreen voting in some Florida counties, Hood wasn't able to escape accusations of partisan favoritism that had dogged Harris.

In the months leading up to the 2004 election, Florida had to scrap a flawed database it had used to help counties purge felons from voter roles after reports of shortcomings that may have kept legally registered voters from participating.

After initially defending the database, Hood told county officials not to use it, acknowledging that 2,500 ex-felons on the list had had their voting rights restored through the state's clemency process. Most were Democrats, and many were black, drawing intense criticism that the list was rigged.

Officials from the state Democratic Party did not return calls seeking comment Tuesday.

Bush spokeswoman Alia Faraj noted that there was wide consensus that the election itself in 2004 went well.

"She played a key role in last year's election and Florida had a successful and smooth election despite the storms that pounded our state," Faraj said. "We proved a lot of critics wrong."

But Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU in Florida, said Hood was the head of an agency that tried too often to curtail access to voting, rather than expand it.

In addition to her defense of the felon database that was eventually scrapped, Simon pointed to Hood's objection to the ACLU's call for full audits of touchscreen machines and to the agency's policy that ballots cast in the wrong precinct were invalid.

"That led to the disenfranchisement of perfectly legal voters, eligible voters," Simon said.

"Her record is, I think, a setback for the expansion of the right to vote in Florida," Simon said.

Faraj said the governor would obviously begin searching for a replacement quickly, with the 2006 election a year away, but said there was no definitive timeline.

Hood had become Orlando's first female mayor in 1992 and served for eight years after 10 years on the city council. She also owned a public relations firm.

While she was best known as the person in charge of elections, her job responsibilities ranged from running state programs for the arts and historic preservation to running the Division of Corporations.

An avid fan of the arts, Hood has pushed for that part of her job to get more attention in recent years, with little success.

And she said she was proud of the work she quietly did in that arena.

"We now have the highest level of funding for the arts that we have in recent years," Hood said.

Her resignation will take effect Nov. 21.

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