Martina Thornton, 40, is a native of the Czech Republic who moved to Martha’s Vineyard in 2001. She lives in Edgartown.

Ms. Thornton has been the Dukes County manager since 2012. Before that, she served four years as executive assistant to the county manager. She is the mother of two boys, and volunteers for several nonprofit organizations. She serves on the board of directors for the Edgartown School parents advisory committee, and sings with the Martha’s Vineyard Community Chorus.

Prior to her county employment, she worked for two Island law firms as a paralegal, doing real estate title examinations and document preparation at the registry of deeds on a daily basis.

She is running for register of deeds as an unenrolled candidate with no party affiliation.

The register of deeds is the recorder of records for land related transactions, including deeds, mortgages, liens, easements, and covenants, among other documents.

“I’m passionate about public service, and this is an opportunity to continue my career in public service,” Ms. Thornton said. “I believe the register of deeds has two most important parts to the job. The first is to manage the department, oversee the department, make sure it’s run properly. The second one, it’s an arm of the land court. They need to decide when some complicated closings come in, documents, can it be recorded, or does it have to go up to the land court for approval.”

Ms. Thornton said she has worked closely with retiring register of deeds Dianne Powers in her role as county manager. The registry is a department of Dukes County, but operates independently with an elected register accountable to voters. She hires her own staff and oversees the administration and operation of the office.

“Dianne did a great job and she has a good staff, but there is always room for improvement. There are some things I would like to continue to improve, put some additional documents online,” she said.

Among those documents are grantor/grantee index books, which provide a record of the people recording documents and the location of the documents, either online, or in physical books at the registry office.

“Which would be making life easier for title examiners and cut down on their search time,” Ms. Thornton said. “There could be improvements in the flow of recording, saving time.”

She cited her experience in adopting a new electronic system network at the county administration building as a qualification for overseeing electronic records systems at the registry, but noted some of the information technology work and maintenance at the registry is currently contracted to private vendors.

“There are specialists that you can hire and that you have already on call through maintenance contracts,” she said. “It’s great to have an in-house person to trouble shoot, but I don’t think the register of deeds necessarily needs to be high tech. They need to know how to manage the department and how to answer the questions that come that are legal related, land court related, recording related.”

She said she hopes to make the registry of deeds office more accessible to the public.

“Preserve and showcase the historic documents. We have documents from 1641, some of them are in Wampanoag. There are really documents that should be shown to the public,” Ms. Thornton said. “Also what would be beneficial is to reach out to the public and educate them about how the registry can help them protect their interests and their property.”

On her campaign website, Ms. Thornton lists 17 endorsements, including from Dukes County commissioners, Island selectmen and community leaders.

“As a county manager, I have proved my skills,” she said. “Bringing people together, into collaboration to achieve goals, implementing new programs, take a problem, turn it around and make it into an opportunity to better serve the public.”