The Hartford Courant has this story about Connecticut’s decentralized election system, in which the Secretary of State has no power over the administration of federal and state elections, relative to the town clerks.  As the story says, this is the standard method used throughout New England.  That is why New England states require candidates for statewide office to submit signatures collected in each town, directly to that town.  In most New England states the candidate or party must then collect those local signatures, after they have been checked, and transport them to the Secretary of State.  Ballot access in New England is considerably more difficult than it is in most parts of the nation, partly for this reason.