House Republicans push election overhaul with voter ID, mail-in ballot changes ahead of midterms

House Republicans are rolling out a massive election overhaul package ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, including new voter ID requirements as well as limitations on how and when votes are cast.

The Committee on House Administration is unveiling new legislation on Thursday called the Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act, which would impose new federal standards on national elections across the U.S.

The sprawling bill includes key portions of the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a measure that was led by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, in the House. It comes as the Senate sees a renewed pressure campaign led by Elon Musk and others to take up that legislation.

"Americans should be confident their elections are being run with integrity — including commonsense voter ID requirements, clean voter rolls, and citizenship verification," Committee on House Administration Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said in a statement.

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He said the bill's guardrails "will improve voter confidence, bolster election integrity, and make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat."

Like the SAVE Act, the legislation would include mandatory proof of citizenship when a person registers to vote for the first time. 

Casting a ballot in federal elections would also require a photo ID. Progressive Democrats and groups like the League of Women Voters have argued that photo ID laws disenfranchise minority voters, while the Heritage Foundation pointed out that it's shown to be popular across multiple public polls.

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Steil's elections bill would also ban ranked-choice voting in federal races, require states to use auditable paper ballots rather than electronic slips, and impose stronger requirements on voter list maintenance to ensure rolls are up to date.

New guardrails on mail-in ballots include a ban on universal mail-in ballots — meaning voters would have to specifically request one to receive it — while also requiring mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day to count and banning "ballot harvesting" by third parties aiming to deliver them to poll centers.

The new legislation comes ahead of what's expected to be a difficult midterm election season for Republicans.

Historical trends dictate that the first midterms after power changes hands in Washington normally see that party in power suffer losses, but GOP leaders are publicly optimistic that they can reverse that trend.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House to ask whether it supports Steil's bill but did not hear back by press time.