House Administration Committee Chairman Brian Steil (R-WI) unveiled a bill on Thursday aiming to increase voter integrity in the 2026 elections.
The bill, called the Make Elections Great Again Act, is an effort from the committee to implement baseline standards for administering federal elections through a slew of added requirements, including two that would affect the elections this November, if signed into law, by mandating auditable paper ballots and a ban on ranked choice voting.
“Americans should be confident their elections are being run with integrity — including commonsense voter ID requirements, clean voter rolls, and citizenship verification,” said Chairman Steil. “These reforms will improve voter confidence, bolster election integrity, and make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat.”
The bill would tighten guardrails for elections to come through requiring identification and citizenship verification, requiring mail-in ballots to be received by the close of polls on Election Day with the exception of military personnel stationed overseas, prohibiting federal agencies from using taxpayer funds to conduct partisan voter registration initiatives, prohibiting operatives from harvesting completed ballots and delivering them to poll centers, and requiring voters to request a ballot affirmatively to vote by mail.
Voter integrity has been a longtime issue for the GOP.
House Republicans have been pushing for the Senate to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, a bill that requires proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, which passed in the lower chamber last year. The provision included in the MEGA Act is the same as the SAVE Act’s, marking the latest effort by House Republicans to usher in guardrails on verifying citizenship for elections through Congress.
“If the Senate does not pass the SAVE Act and/or schedule a date for a vote by the time we return, I have enough votes to shut down the floor of the House,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) wrote on X last week. “We are not going to play games—especially given that half of the Republicans in both the House and Senate are concerned about their reelections. They want the floor open for their messaging bills.”
The Republican Study Committee strongly urged the upper chamber to pass the SAVE Act this week, with the backing of many members, as frustration has boiled over due to the legislation being stalled.
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“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 2026 elections are critical for both parties, as the House historically flips to the opposite party of the White House in midterm election years. Republicans are trying to keep their trifecta for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s presidency, with Democrats trying to flip one or both chambers.
Hailey Bullis contributed to this article.