From Motor Voter to MEGA Act: 30 Years of Federal Election Law Battles

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Congress’s 1993 Motor Voter law made voter registration part of a routine government errand. The law requires all but six states to offer registration when people apply for or renew a driver’s license. A person already dealing with government can start the process there, rather than finding a separate election office.

Two bills in Congress, the Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act and the SAVE America Act, would add citizenship documents at registration and photo identification at voting. Both bills propose amendments to the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act. The proposals put two promises in tension: checking eligibility more closely and ensuring that an eligible citizen can actually get a registration accepted and a ballot counted. Current federal law has rules of both kinds; the battles concern where Congress and courts draw the line between a safeguard and a barrier.

The federal floor beneath state-run elections

The Constitution’s Elections Clause gives state legislatures the first responsibility for the times, places and manner of House and Senate elections, while allowing Congress to make or alter those regulations. The result is a federal floor: national requirements that Congress sets and that states running elections must meet.

The Constitution separately says that anyone qualified to vote for the larger chamber of their state legislature is qualified to vote for the U.S. House. How an election is run and who is qualified to vote in it are related questions, but they are not the same question.

Federal law generally prohibits noncitizens from voting for federal offices. The citizenship-document debate concerns how eligibility is demonstrated, rather than whether citizenship matters.

Motor Voter joined registration to everyday government

Congress enacted the National Voter Registration Act, commonly called Motor Voter, in 1993 to expand registration opportunities. The law requires covered states to offer registration when residents apply for or renew a driver’s license and to forward completed applications to election officials.

Registration opportunities also must be offered at public-assistance offices and offices providing state-funded programs primarily serving people with disabilities.

The law covers 44 states and the District of Columbia. Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming are exempt because, on and after August 1, 1994, they either had no voter registration requirement or offered Election Day registration at polling places.

Motor Voter also provides for a national voter registration form that can be mailed in. The mail application must state each eligibility requirement, including citizenship, and the applicant must attest to meeting each one and sign under penalty of perjury. An attestation is a sworn statement that the information is true; documentary proof adds a requirement to produce a record supporting it.

An eligible person who applies through a motor vehicle office must be registered in time for an election if the valid form is submitted at least 30 days before it, or by the state’s own deadline if that is closer to Election Day.

Motor Voter also requires reasonable, uniform and nondiscriminatory efforts to remove ineligible registrants who died or moved outside the jurisdiction. It prohibits removing a registrant solely because the person did not vote.

A registrant can be removed for having moved if they confirm in writing that they moved outside the jurisdiction. Otherwise, removal on that ground requires that the registrant fail to answer a confirmation notice and then not vote or appear to vote through the second federal general election after the notice. The delay gives a person still living there a chance to correct the record before losing registration.

Congress responded to the failures of election administration

Problems in the 2000 elections, especially Florida vote-count disputes that delayed the presidential result for weeks, prompted the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Enacted in 2002, HAVA established the independent, bipartisan Election Assistance Commission to support election administration.

HAVA’s voting-system standards include private and independent verification of selections and an opportunity to change the ballot or correct an error before it is cast and counted. Its disability-access standard requires at least one accessible voting system at each polling place, with comparable privacy and independence.

HAVA makes each state’s computerized registration list the official voter registration list for federal elections, except in a state that has had no registration requirement continuously since October 29, 2002.

A person who declares that they are registered and eligible for a federal election must be offered a provisional ballot if their name is missing from the polling-place list or an official disputes their eligibility. A provisional ballot is kept apart until officials can verify the voter’s eligibility, so the question need not be settled at the check-in desk.

The provisional ballot counts if the reviewing official finds the voter eligible under state law. Officials must provide a free way to learn whether the ballot counted and, if it did not, why.

Certain voters who register by mail and are voting for the first time in a federal election in their state must provide identification, unless an exemption applies. That federal rule accepts current valid photo identification or a qualifying document showing name and address, such as a utility bill, bank statement or government check. A voter is exempt who already submitted qualifying identification, or whose driver’s license or Social Security information was successfully matched. An affected voter without the required identification may nevertheless cast a provisional ballot. This is a limited rule for certain first-time voters, not a national photo-ID requirement.

Court decisions changed different parts of the floor

In Crawford v. Marion County Election Board in 2008, the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s photo-ID law against a challenge that sought to strike down the entire law. Indiana defended the requirement by invoking election modernization, fraud prevention and public confidence. Justice Stevens’s opinion found that the record showed a limited burden on voters broadly and did not justify invalidating the entire law, while acknowledging heavier burdens for some voters. Stevens’s reasoning spoke for three justices; three more agreed with the result in a separate opinion.

A separate question is whether a state may add requirements to the federal registration form. In Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona in 2013, the Supreme Court held that the federal registration law displaced Arizona’s extra citizenship-document requirement for applicants using the federal form. That case concerned a state adding requirements beyond a federal form, rather than Congress changing the federal registration statute itself.

In Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute in 2018, the Supreme Court upheld Ohio’s process of sending a confirmation card after two years without voting and removing people who neither returned it nor voted during four further years. Nonvoting helped trigger that process, but the notice and waiting period were also required before removal.

Two other decisions concern the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a separate law. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act required covered jurisdictions to obtain federal approval before implementing voting changes, a process called preclearance. In Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the Section 4(b) formula that determined which jurisdictions were covered, without ruling Section 5 itself unconstitutional. Jurisdictions covered by that formula no longer had to seek preclearance unless a separate court order imposed it under Section 3(c).

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits voting practices that deny or abridge voting rights because of race, color or language-minority membership nationwide. The Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision in April 2026 held that Section 2 did not require Louisiana’s additional majority-minority congressional district, here one with a Black majority, and therefore did not justify the state’s use of race in that map. The Court held that map to be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, meaning an unlawfully race-based drawing of electoral districts.

Callais also set out what a challenger suing under Section 2 must show: evidence supporting a strong inference that the state intentionally drew its districts to give minority voters less opportunity because of their race. A challenger must separate race from the state’s race-neutral considerations, including politics. In the earlier lawsuit that led Louisiana to add the district, the court said, the plaintiffs showed that Black and white voters consistently supported different candidates but did not account for party preferences.

New bills would add paperwork or restore oversight

Rep. Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican, introduced H.R. 7300, the Make Elections Great Again Act, in January 2026. The bill was referred to the Committee on House Administration and several other House committees. The Government Publishing Office’s record lists referral to the Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement on February 2, 2026.

MEGA would require physical photo identification for in-person federal voting. A voter without it could cast a provisional ballot, but would have to present the required ID or a state affidavit explaining a religious objection to being photographed within three days after casting it.

MEGA would also require documentary citizenship proof for federal registration, with a state process for applicants without the specified records to present other evidence and attest to citizenship under penalty of perjury.

For voting other than in person, MEGA generally would require a photo-ID copy with the ballot, or the last four Social Security digits and a state affidavit that the voter could not obtain a copy after reasonable efforts. Exceptions would cover qualifying military voters outside the United States because of service and people entitled to vote remotely under the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act. That law covers elderly voters or voters with disabilities assigned to inaccessible polling places who request an alternative way to vote in advance.

MEGA would also end automatic universal mail-ballot delivery for federal elections by requiring the voter to submit a request. Request-based absentee voting and automatic delivery of mail ballots are different arrangements; abolishing the latter does not mean abolishing every mail ballot.

The Committee on House Administration held its MEGA hearing on February 10, 2026. At that hearing, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray supported it as a way to establish common national standards for election integrity, security and confidence. He pointed to Wyoming’s implementation of voter ID passed in 2021 and documentary citizenship requirements passed in 2025, calling those measures successful and easy to implement. Gray’s Wyoming account does not establish how the requirements would affect voters nationwide or how often fraud occurs.

A separate proposal, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE America Act, passed the House as an amendment to S. 1383 in February 2026. Its sponsor Rep. Chip Roy described it as a safeguard to ensure that only citizens vote in federal elections and that voters show identification.

SAVE America would require documentary citizenship proof for federal registration, including a passport, a citizenship-indicating REAL ID or other qualifying combinations of records. A photo on a document and a record demonstrating citizenship serve different purposes, so an ordinary ID should not be assumed to do both.

The House-passed text includes a process for applicants without the specified records to present other documentation and attest to citizenship under penalty of perjury, as well as a process for differing names on qualifying documents.

SAVE America would also require physical photo identification for in-person federal voting, with a provisional ballot for a voter without it and a three-day deadline to provide the required ID or a state religious-objection affidavit. For remote ballots it generally would require a photo-ID copy, or the last four Social Security digits and a state affidavit of inability to obtain a copy after reasonable efforts. SAVE America exempts absent uniformed-services voters and the same federal accessibility category from its remote-ballot identification rule.

The official record reports Senate consideration of the House message on S. 1383 on March 26, 2026. The proposed changes would amend the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

The Brennan Center for Justice argues that document requirements could exclude eligible citizens who lack ready access to a passport, birth certificate or naturalization papers. It cites a survey by the center and partners estimating that 21.3 million voting-age citizens lack those records readily available, with voters of color, younger voters and people whose names changed especially affected. The estimate measures document access, rather than the number of people who would ultimately lose a vote.

The Brennan Center also argues that noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare, pointing to Louisiana and Utah investigations of voter rolls as evidence. Those investigations do not provide a complete national count of noncitizen voting. The disagreement involves both the value of extra verification and the risk that an eligible citizen cannot complete it.

The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, H.R. 14, would restore preclearance coverage using voting-rights violations during a rolling 25-year period. Its legislative record lists referral to the House Judiciary Committee on March 5, 2025. That proposal would change federal oversight of voting changes, while the citizenship-document bills would change requirements at registration and voting.

What a voter can check, and what federal law protects

USAGov provides links to state registration deadlines, registration-status checks and procedures for updating a name or address. Check the official state or local election office’s rules before relying on a national bill headline. A proposal describes what its sponsors want to change; the applicable election rules depend on what has become law and how courts have interpreted it.

If a name is missing at the polling place, ask the election official about a provisional ballot and how to check whether it counted. The safeguard is a chance to have eligibility verified, not a guarantee that every provisional ballot will count.

The Justice Department’s Voting Section enforces federal civil voting-rights laws and can be contacted through its voting-rights resources, at 800-253-3931 or at voting.section@usdoj.gov. The National Voter Registration Act also allows the Attorney General to sue and provides a private enforcement route with advance-notice rules.

An aggrieved person ordinarily gives written notice to the chief state election official and may sue if the violation remains uncorrected after 90 days. The period is 20 days for a violation within 120 days before a federal election, and no advance notice is required for a violation within 30 days before that election. The closer the election, the less time the law gives officials to correct a violation before an aggrieved voter can go to court.

Motor Voter’s promise of access and the newer proposals’ promise of verification meet at the same practical point: an eligible person trying to get a registration accepted and a ballot counted. Understanding the federal floor means identifying which requirement is already binding, which safeguard protects against an error and which change Congress is still debating.

Related GovFacts reading: mail ballot deadlines and court challenges; voter registration data and privacy; voter identification and registration requirements.