Washington, DC – Today, Congressman Bryan Steil (WI-01), Chairman of the House Administration Committee, unveiled a comprehensive package of election reforms. His bill, the Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act, puts baseline requirements in place for state election administration.
“Americans should be confident their elections are being run with integrity – including commonsense voter ID requirements, clean voter rolls, and citizenship verification,” said Steil. “These reforms will improve voter confidence, bolster election integrity, and make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat.”
Here’s what others are saying about the MEGA Act:
“Fair and verifiable elections are the bedrock of our democracy and the MEGA Act would restore confidence in our elections and make them safer,” said MacIver CEO Annette Olson. “MacIver has led the charge to bring election reform to Wisconsin and we are pleased to see Congressman Steil put forward such strong legislation in Congress.”
“I’ve spent the last decade registering voters across the country and empowering Americans to vote. Without fair elections, we aren’t a free nation,” said Scott Presler, founder of Early Vote Action. “Thank you to Chairman Steil for his leadership on comprehensive election reform. Let’s make elections great again!”
“The bill gives clear guidance where the original law in 1993 failed – states have an obligation to have clean voter rolls. 25,000 dead registrants in Michigan or voters supposedly living in Vegas casinos will no longer be acceptable. This bill will bring clarity to voter roll maintenance obligations under the NVRA,” said J. Christian Adams, President of the Public Interest Legal Foundation and Commissioner on the Unites States Commission of Civil Rights.
“I applaud Chairman Steil for leading efforts to reform and modernize our elections system. For too long, federal laws — especially those governing voter list maintenance — have hampered states that are serious about improving election security and enabled those that are not. Reform is long overdue,” said Justin Riemer, President & CEO, Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE).*
The legislation, which will be introduced during the House’s Friday pro-forma session, will:
- Require photo identification to vote
- Require states to verify citizenship of individuals when registering to vote
- Implement stronger routine voter list maintenance requirements in states
- Require mail-in ballots to be received by the close of polls on election day
- Require states to use auditable paper ballots
- Ban ballot harvesting
- Ban ranked choice voting
- Ban universal vote by mail
*Title for ID purposes only
Read the full bill text here.
Background:
The Committee on House Administration has oversight authority of federal elections.
Chairman Steil previously introduced the American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act during the 118th Congress.
