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. Covered states must 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.

The MEGA and SAVE America proposals would add citizenship documents at registration and photo identification at voting. That puts two promises in tension: checking eligibility more closely and ensuring that an eligible citizen can actually get a registration accepted and a ballot counted. The federal rules do both; 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. That arrangement leaves room for both local administration and national requirements.

The Constitution separately ties qualifications for House voters to the qualifications for voters of the most numerous branch of their state legislature. Rules about administering an election and rules about who qualifies to vote are related questions, but they are not interchangeable.

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. An applicant already dealing with government can begin voter registration there instead of having to find a separate office.

The law covers 44 states and the District of Columbia. Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming are exempt because of qualifying systems with no registration requirement or election-day registration maintained since the statutory cutoff.

The federal mail application must state eligibility requirements, including citizenship, and require an applicant’s attestation and signature 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.

For registration through a motor vehicle application, the law protects timely applicants whose valid forms are submitted by the lesser of 30 days before the election or the period provided by state law. If state law allows registration closer to Election Day than 30 days, that later deadline applies.

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 voter list can be accurate only if it retains eligible voters as well as removing ineligible ones.

Unless a registrant confirms in writing that they moved outside the jurisdiction, removal on that ground requires an unanswered confirmation notice and no vote or appearance to vote through the second subsequent federal general election. 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. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA), enacted in 2002, 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 the computerized registration list the official list for federal elections, with an exception for states that continuously had no registration requirement under the law’s specified cutoff. A database requirement addresses recordkeeping; it does not by itself settle what to do when a voter and an official disagree about eligibility.

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. That ballot preserves a vote for later verification instead of forcing the entire eligibility question to 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. Qualifying prior submission of identification, or a successful match of specified driver’s-license or Social Security information, can satisfy an exemption. An affected voter without the required identification may nevertheless cast a provisional ballot. This limited first-time-voter rule should not be confused with a universal 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 the broad challenge before it. 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. That weighing of a particular law differs from the question of whether a state may add requirements to a 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.

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 invalidated the coverage formula in Section 4(b), 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 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.

The decision requires evidence supporting a strong inference that a state intentionally drew districts to give minority voters less opportunity because of their race. Challengers must separate racial discrimination from race-neutral considerations, including politics; evidence that racial groups prefer different candidates must account for partisan preferences. The fate of Louisiana’s map was therefore part of a broader change in what a redistricting challenger must prove.

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.

New bills would add paperwork or restore oversight

Bill statuses were checked on October 2, 2026.

Rep. Steil introduced H.R. 7300, the Make Elections Great Again Act, in January 2026. 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 federal polling-place accessibility law.

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.

At the House hearing on MEGA, 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. That is a concrete state implementation account, rather than proof of nationwide effects 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 legislative record lists Senate consideration of the House message on S. 1383 on March 26, 2026. It remains a proposal awaiting further action, rather than a nationwide rule voters should treat as enacted.

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 examples support its argument about rarity; they are not a complete national count. 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.