House Republicans have introduced a sweeping federal election reform bill aimed at tightening voting procedures and restoring public confidence ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
The House Administration Committee on Thursday rolled out the Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act, a comprehensive package that, according to Sean Hannity, would establish national standards for federal contests and respond directly to long-standing concerns from election-integrity advocates. GOP leaders argue the measure would create uniform safeguards across states, countering the patchwork of rules that has fueled controversy and mistrust in recent cycles.
Americans should be confident their elections are being run with integrity including commonsense voter ID requirements, clean voter rolls, and citizenship verification, Committee Chairman Bryan Steil (R-WI) said in a statement. He added that the bills guardrails will improve voter confidence, bolster election integrity, and make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat.
Under the MEGA Act, states would be required to verify citizenship when individuals register to vote and require photo identification to cast a ballot in federal elections. The legislation would also mandate auditable paper ballots, require mail ballots to be received by Election Day to countwith an exception for overseas military votersand bar universal vote-by-mail systems that automatically send ballots to all voters.
In addition, the bill would prohibit ranked-choice voting in federal races, a system conservatives argue confuses voters and can dilute clear majorities in favor of engineered outcomes preferred by progressive activists. Democrats and voting-rights groups, however, claim such reforms risk disenfranchising eligible voters, particularly those lacking immediate access to citizenship documents, setting up yet another partisan clash in a narrowly divided Congress.
For Republicans, the MEGA Act represents a high-stakes effort to secure elections through traditional safeguards such as voter ID, paper trails, and strict ballot deadlines, while resisting expansive mail-in and ranked-choice schemes championed by the left. With the 2026 midterms on the horizon, both parties are already positioning this fight over election rules as a defining battle over the integrity and direction of American democracy.
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