Editor’s note: More than 10,000 officials across the country run U.S. elections. This interview is part of a series highlighting the election heroes who are the faces of democracy.
Neal Kelley, a Republican, served as the registrar of voters for Orange County, California for nearly two decades before retiring from the role in 2022. Home to nearly 2 million voters, Orange County, part of the Greater Los Angeles area, is one of the largest jurisdictions by population in the country and the third largest in the state. Kelley is currently the Chair Emeritus of the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, as well as the statewide project manager for the 2024-2026 elections in Hawaii.
While in office, Kelley was the longest-standing election official in Orange County. He began his career in elections in 2004 as chief deputy registrar of voters and was officially appointed as registrar in 2006. During Kelley’s tenure, he led the office through the largest cycle of elections in the county’s 128-year history. As the chief election official for Orange County, he led an office responsible for conducting elections, verifying petitions, and maintaining voter records.
Kelley has been the recipient of numerous state and national awards for his work in election administration. He was previously recognized by the National Association of County Recorders, Election Officials and Clerks (iGO) with the “Public Official of the Year” award, and was named by the Orange County Register as one of “OC’s Most 100 Influential” individuals in 2016, 2019, 2020, and 2021.
In addition to these accolades, he previously served as the president of the California Association of Clerks and Elections Officials (CACEO), the National Association of County Recorders, and Election Officials and Clerks (iGO). Additionally, he was an appointed member and past chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Board of Advisors and a former member of the EAC Voting System Standards Board. He is a former appointee and founding member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Election Security Task Force Government Coordinating Council (GCC), where he helped to oversee the protection of America’s election infrastructure.
Since 2022, Kelley has been part of Issue One’s Faces of Democracy campaign advocating for protections for election workers and for regular, predictable, and sufficient federal funding of elections. And since 2024, he has been part of Issue One’s bipartisan National Council on Election Integrity, a group of more than 40 government, political, and civil leaders who are devoted to defending the legitimacy of free and fair elections in the United States.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Issue One: How did you end up in this profession?
Neal Kelley: I think I have a little bit of an unusual background compared to a lot of election officials. I was in the private sector for half of my professional career — I was involved with the retail industry in the photography world — like those one-hour photos back in the day. I ended up growing a company and then selling it. They filed bankruptcy shortly after I sold it, which meant I was out of money — so I entered the job market.
During the time I had my business, I got my MBA from USC and did a number of things at the local level in politics. Orange County had launched their voting system, and they were looking for a chief deputy. Someone I knew thought it would be a great position for me and encouraged me to apply.
Long story short, after a few months, I ended up getting that position. I jumped right in, and shortly after I got there, they put me in as the interim registrar of voters, and shortly after that, the permanent registrar. It happened very quickly.
I think what was a little unusual about my experience is that in most counties and jurisdictions, the chief local election official sort of rises through the ranks — they don’t bring somebody in from the outside at that level, so it was unusual that I got that opportunity. But I ran with it and ended up being there for almost 18 years in that role.
Issue One: What part of the election administration story in Orange County do you think is not told or widely understood enough?
Neal Kelley: From my perspective, the amount of work that goes in to improve the voter experience. That is such a wide-ranging part of the operation that I think most people just don’t really understand.
I like to think of it as an ecosystem, how all of the pieces and parts work together to make that experience that the voter has, whether it's through the mail or in person.
In my opinion, I think that is one of the biggest misconceptions there is about elections. If you think of the analogy of, let's say, a post office, and you put a letter in that blue box, nobody thinks about what goes on behind it to get across the country into the hands of somebody else.
That’s something that I would always like to impart on people — the amount of work and the intensity that is involved to make a good experience for voters.
Issue One: Orange County is one of the largest jurisdictions in the nation. How many voters were on the roll when you were the registrar, and what were some of the main challenges of running a jurisdiction of that size?
Neal Kelley: I'm painfully aware of how big it is. There were just shy of two million voters when I left. During my tenure, we had a growth of about 500,000 voters.
I will say that in such a large jurisdiction, things can go wrong at what you think of as a small level, but can quickly explode into a fire. I saw that being much more rapid than I saw in smaller jurisdictions since I’ve retired and worked with such jurisdictions. It just moves at such a speed that you have to react very quickly.
Issue One: What was the typical price tag of running an election in Orange County? And where does funding come from for election administration?
Neal Kelley: In an election that is happening countywide — I’ll use the presidential election as an example — we would typically budget about $4.5 million.
A large chunk of those funds would come from the general fund of the county, directly out of the tax dollars. The percentage that was not funded through the general fund would come from the jurisdictions that we were running elections for. In Orange County, there are 34 cities within the county. All 34 cities contracted with my office to run their elections. That wasn’t the case when I took over — there were still a few cities that were running their own elections. At the end, we were running every single election. So that's where the other funds would come from.
Issue One: Many people are surprised to learn that the federal government doesn’t routinely fund the costs of running elections. Why do you think the federal government should routinely contribute to election administration costs?
Neal Kelley: I will tell you that was something that I was always advocating for — to be able to get funds from the federal government.
The Constitution is very clear; Congress has a role in elections, and that is for congressional elections or federal offices. There is obviously some oversight in that, and they not only regulate but they control, through statute, how those congressional elections will run.
The federal government has a vested interest in this, and they like to push around their weight, but they don’t put up the money when it’s required and necessary. There’s a huge funding gap between what the federal government will offer through grants or things like that that they’ve done over the years, and what is actually required and necessary.
Issue One: Did you notice any gaps in resources between a large jurisdiction like Orange County, compared to smaller jurisdictions within California or others across the nation?
Neal Kelley: Absolutely. California is a good example because there are 58 counties across the state — including some of the largest counties in the country and smallest in the country.
So you have these huge funding disparities between those counties. I mean, you’re competing with fire and police and local tax dollars to run elections. I hate to say it, but police and fire are always going to win out.
When you’re in a county with very small resources or budgets, that can really have a huge impact on small jurisdictions, oftentimes. While we would struggle for resources at the county level in Orange County, it wasn’t as extreme as I saw in my colleagues in smaller counties.
Issue One: In recent years, election-related misconceptions, conspiracy theories, and lies have proliferated. How did this sort of narrative impact your daily work? How did it compare to when you first entered the field of elections almost 20 years prior?
Neal Kelley: It was a big part of my daily life when I left and retired in 2022, but I’ve stayed in elections since then. When I got into the business in the early 2000s, there weren’t blogs; there weren’t things on the internet that were being spread around like crazy. That grew over time from the time that I started until the time that I left.
I think one of the things that I learned early on was that you need to be able to respond quickly and with some authority to do your best to try and tamp some of that down.
One of the things that I did, we were one of the first county agencies to get onto Twitter. When I first did so, there wasn’t a policy for being online and for social media — the county quickly had to adapt to that.
I was able to see where things were going, that we had to be able to respond quickly and do our best to strike those things out — which didn’t always work.
Issue One: As the role of maintaining (if not increasing) election security is being increasingly borne by states and localities, what can election administrators do right now with limited resources to keep their elections secure?
Neal Kelley: That’s something I’ve thought a lot about because I’ve done a lot of work with the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections, which is one of the things I was involved with after I left Orange County.
We would talk to local jurisdictions around the country about what they could do in the absence of resources. One of the things that they can do at the local level is to partner with their local law enforcement and to partner with local agencies outside of their office that may be able to assist when there are gaps from the federal government.
One good example of that is that there are regional agencies across the country that are intelligence gathering units for the state or for local governments that can provide a tremendous amount of resources to help local jurisdictions. A lot of people didn't have that knowledge, or they didn't realize that those resources were available. So that's the thing that I would keep pushing for sure.
Issue One: What would you consider your greatest achievement as an election administrator?
Neal Kelley: For me, it was moving our county from a polling place voting environment to a vote center voting environment.
That fundamentally changed the way — you’re talking night and day — to the way that voters voted in Orange County. I started that project in 2014, and it took almost six years to get it to the point where it was realized. That was through the hard work and leadership of our board of supervisors.
We had 1,200 polling places around the county and had 10,000 volunteers working — oftentimes they’d be in garages and people would trip over a lawnmower. I was thinking this should not be the way we’re voting in the 21st century. To make a long story short, we moved to an all-vote-by-mail environment with in-person solutions at regional centers. That really changed the dynamic.
I had to make sure that all of those regional centers looked exactly the same. So if you went into a vote center in Laguna Beach and then you went into one in Anaheim by Disneyland, it looked exactly the same — same setup and same experience.
That’s what I’m really most proud of, and that was a huge change. We changed all of the systems, the equipment, the way people saw the election and voted their ballots. I’m really proud of that because hopefully 100 years from now, they’ll be doing the same thing or something similar.
Issue One: What made you decide to stay involved in elections after retiring from your registrar role in 2022?
Neal Kelley: I really got the election bug, and it has stayed in my blood. I enjoy not only the people, but also the adrenaline that you get with such an operation that elections can bring.
For instance, I chaired the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections for two years. I was very passionate about election security and the work that I did in Orange County, but also around the country, seeing ways that we could expand that.
Since that time, I’ve been teaching about election administration at the University of Minnesota; that’s been something that I’m passionate about as well.
Finally, I’ve been involved with election administration in the state of Hawaii. It’s different — the state contracts a little bit differently than other states do. They contract with a vendor to handle the entire election, meaning mailing ballots, setting up in-person voting. I'm really doing the exact same thing I did as a registrar in Orange County, but I'm doing it in support of the Hawaii elections as the statewide project lead here in Hawaii.
So that’s a long answer to saying that I really love the work, and I love what I do. One of the things that I’ve always remembered, we used to have busloads of people that would come from Los Angeles from citizenship ceremonies where they would take their oath as a new citizen. The first stop that they would make on the way back home in Orange County was my office to register to vote. I experienced people who would come in crying for the ability for them to cast a ballot. They were so proud of that after becoming a citizen and I realized how important our work was, that’s why I love it.
Issue One: What differences are there between the elections process in Orange County and where you currently are in Hawaii?
Neal Kelley: I think part of the reason why I was able to fit in in Hawaii so well is because they use the exact same equipment that I did in Orange County, the exact same process — meaning all vote by mail and a vote center component. So that part of it has been a really easy adjustment because it’s similar to my former operation.
Of course, Hawaii has their own traditions, and culturally speaking, they do many things very differently than we did in California. But at the end of the day, you’re still helping people vote, and that’s what has been great about it.
Issue One: Outside of being passionate about safe and secure elections, what are your hobbies?
Neal Kelley: I’m learning to play the ukulele, and I’ve been enjoying that very much. Music has always been a passion, but I was never really able to pursue it in the way I can now.
I also really enjoy cooking, and I think my creative side comes out when I cook. With cooking, there’s always a way to keep improving.
I have two great kids that are a part of my life.
And here in Hawaii, I recently got a type of Vespa scooter. There’s a huge scooter culture here because traffic and parking can be so crazy. I go around town on a scooter, even when I have to go to a vote center to deal with something for work.
Issue One: What is your favorite book or movie?
Neal Kelley: I’m a big Quentin Tarantino fan, I’d have to say “Inglourious Basterds” is one of my favorite movies.
In terms of books, I’ve been reading a lot about UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena). I’m kind of fascinated with the whole UFO thing — not that I’m buying into it.
I’m also a history buff. One of my favorite books that I’ve ever read have been by David McCullough, who wrote “John Adams" and “1776,” a lot of historical books that I’ve really enjoyed.
Issue One: Which historical figure would you have most liked to have had an opportunity to meet?
Neal Kelley: That’s a hard question; it’s stumping me a bit. There are several that come to mind, but I probably would say that I’ve read a lot about Ulysses S. Grant. For historical perspective, I would say President Grant.
Amelia Minkin is a research associate at Issue One.
Caroline Pirrone is an Election Protection and Money in Politics Intern at Issue One.
Rebecca Dorsey is an Election Protection Intern at Issue One.
