U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI) on Jan. 30 introduced legislation that aims to promote the integrity and improve the administration of elections for federal office.
“Americans should be confident their elections are being run with integrity, including common-sense voter ID requirements, clean voter rolls, and citizenship verification,” said Rep. Steil, chairman of the U.S. House Administration Committee, which has oversight authority of federal elections.
“These reforms will improve voter confidence, bolster election integrity, and make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat,” said the congressman, who is sponsoring the 83-page Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act, H.R. 7300, to authorize numerous election reforms.
For instance, H.R. 7300 would require photo identification to vote; would require states to verify citizenship of individuals when registering to vote; would implement stronger routine voter list maintenance requirements in states; and would require mail-in ballots to be received by the close of polls on election day.
Additionally, the bill would require states to use auditable paper ballots; ban ballot harvesting; ban ranked choice voting; and ban universal vote by mail, according to a bill summary provided by Rep. Steil’s staff.
H.R. 7300 has 24 Republican original cosponsors, including U.S. Reps. Greg Murphy (R-NC), Mike Carey (R-OH), Stephanie Bice (R-OK), Tony Gonzales (R-TX), Rob Bresnahan (R-PA), Kevin Hern (R-OK), Young Kim (R-CA), and August Pfluger (R-TX).
The bill also has garnered support from MacIver, Early Vote Action, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, and Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE).