Civic primer
Who runs elections
There is no national election office. In the United States, elections are run by the states — and mostly by thousands of local governments within them. This is a plain-language reference to who actually administers the vote: the state's chief election official, its election director, the local jurisdictions that do the work, and the narrow role the federal government plays. Neutral by design: we describe who does what and link the sources.
In one sentence U.S. elections are decentralized: each state sets the rules and has a chief election official (usually the Secretary of State) and a professional election director, but the actual running of elections is done by roughly 10,000 local jurisdictions — with the federal government playing only a narrow supporting role.
Who runs elections in the U.S.
The Constitution leaves the "times, places and manner" of elections largely to the states, and the states in turn hand most of the day-to-day work to local governments. The result is a decentralized system with three layers — federal, state, and local — where the local layer does the bulk of the actual administration: registering voters, printing and mailing ballots, staffing polling places, and counting the vote.
This is a feature of the design, not a gap: no single office runs American elections. That means there is no one place to look for "the" election authority — you have to know the state, and usually the county or town, whose rules and staff apply to a given ballot.
The chief election official
Each state designates a chief election official — the highest state officer responsible for elections. In most states this is the Secretary of State, an elected statewide officer. But not everywhere:
- Secretary of State — the most common model: a statewide elected official who oversees elections alongside other duties (business filings, records).
- Lieutenant Governor — in Alaska and Utah, the Lt. Governor serves as the chief election official rather than a Secretary of State.
- A state election board or commission — some states vest the role in a bipartisan board or a dedicated commissioner rather than a single elected officer.
The National Association of Secretaries of State keeps the current, state-by-state list of who holds the role.
The state election director
Alongside the elected chief official, most states employ a state election director — the senior professional who runs the elections division day to day: maintaining the statewide voter registration database, issuing guidance to local officials, certifying results, and implementing election law. Where the chief official is a political officeholder, the director is typically the career administrator.
State election directors have their own professional association — the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) — which is distinct from the secretaries' association (NASS). The two roles work together but are not the same office.
The ~10,000 local jurisdictions
The people who actually run an election are almost always local. Across the country there are roughly 10,000 local election jurisdictions — counties in most states, but townships, cities, or villages in others (New England and the upper Midwest run many elections at the town level). Each is led by a local election official: a county clerk, a registrar, a board of elections, or an elected/appointed supervisor.
This is where the concrete work happens: maintaining the local voter rolls, designing and printing the ballot for each precinct, recruiting and training poll workers, running early voting and mail ballots, operating polling places on election day, and tabulating and reporting the local results the state then certifies.
The limited federal role (EAC & FVAP)
The federal government does not run elections, but it plays a few defined supporting roles:
- U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) — an independent, bipartisan federal agency that develops voluntary voting-system guidelines, distributes federal election funds, tests and certifies voting equipment, and runs the nationwide Election Administration and Voting Survey. It assists the states; it does not administer their elections.
- Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) — a Department of Defense program that helps military and overseas citizens register and vote absentee under the UOCAVA law, and maintains tools like the local election office search.
- Others in supporting roles — the Department of Justice enforces federal voting-rights law, and federal agencies offer cybersecurity assistance to state and local officials on request.
How the roles divide
Put together, the layers split roughly like this — with the caveat that the exact division varies by state:
| Layer | Who | What they do |
|---|---|---|
| Federal | EAC, FVAP, DOJ | Assist and set voluntary standards; fund; help military/overseas voters; enforce federal voting-rights law. Does not run elections. |
| State | Chief election official + election director | Set the state's election rules, run the statewide voter database, issue guidance, and certify results. |
| Local | ~10,000 county/town election offices | Actually run the vote: registration, ballots, polling places, poll workers, counting, local reporting. |
The short version: federal assists, states set the rules, and local offices do the work. That's why the same national election looks operationally different from one county to the next.
How to see it yourself
CivicGate maps the state-level officials and points you to the primary sources for the local ones:
- Election officials — each state's chief election official and state election director, sourced to the EAC / NASS / NASED, with a link-out to a local-office search for the jurisdiction layer.
- A district hub's "Election administration" section shows the chief election official and election director for that state, plus how to vote there.
- The FVAP local election office search — the tool for finding your own local election office, the layer that actually runs your ballot.
Sources & further reading
This primer summarizes official and authoritative, non-partisan sources:
- U.S. Election Assistance Commission — the federal election-assistance agency
- EAC — Who runs elections (the decentralized system)
- NASS — State election officials (by state)
- NASED — National Association of State Election Directors
- FVAP — Federal Voting Assistance Program (military & overseas voters, local-office search)
CivicGate is a neutral reference. This page explains who administers elections; the election officials page shows the live state-level roster, and each district hub's Election administration section puts it next to your own representatives.