A rate equation model has been constructed for the optogalvanic effect produced by tunable laser excitation from the neon 1s states in the positive column of a normal glow discharge. The model includes separate rate equations for all four 1s states and has been tested for the 594.5 nm (1s5-2p4), 614.3 nm (1s5-2p6) and 609.6 nm (1s4-2p4) transitions over a range of discharge conditions including pressures ranging from 1.5 to 8 Torr and currents from 0.5 to 10 mA. The authors' model includes 1s ground-state atom and electron collisional coupling processes and they have shown that electron transfer plays a dominant role in determining the magnitude and sign of the optogalvanic effect for these transitions. In the pure neon positive column they have shown that the observed sign change with current for the 609.6 nm line is due to the change in the magnitude of the electron transfer from resonance to metastable states relative to the resonant atom wall losses. Their results indicate that in general transitions which exhibit optogalvanic sign changes may be used as sensitive diagnostic indicators of collisional mixing processes in discharge plasmas.