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President-elect Donald Trump has spent years publicly raging over how the country conducts its elections, including baseless conspiracy theories and inaccurate information in his criticisms. Congressional Republicans have often echoed him.
Now Trump is set to retake office in January, and Republicans will control both houses of Congress. So what changes will they be able to make with their new power?
Will they upend elections based on the right-wing suspicions Trump has stoked since 2020? Will they pursue long-held conservative priorities like proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting? Or will they take a cue from Republican or nonpartisan state election officials based on what they say works best?
As a practical matter, Congress’ impact may be limited. It has authority over the “times, places and manner” of federal elections, but the states control most things about elections. And the Republicans will have only narrow majorities in the House and Senate — too narrow to pass anything on a partisan vote unless House Republicans are near-unanimous, and not enough to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.
On top of that, congressional leaders aren’t signaling plans to turn to major election legislation in January. Talk of the new government’s initial priorities has focused on confirming Trump’s cabinet nominees, and major tax legislation.
Still, Republicans are starting to talk publicly about what a unified GOP-led government could do.
Some Republicans who have supported Trump’s past allegations about the 2020 election are pushing for big changes to existing law. For example, Cleta Mitchell, a Republican lawyer whose Election Integrity Network became a coordinating force for grassroots activists, is calling on the GOP to push through a major overhaul of three bedrock federal statutes governing elections: the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act, and the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.
All three have been in force for decades. And all three “are very problematic,” Mitchell said during an interview with conservative news outlet Blaze News earlier this month.
Mitchell has posted on social media that, among other things, she wants to “eliminate all touch screens, ballot marking devices, electronic voting.” In their place, she wants “paper ballots, hand marked,” she said, so that voting is like the College Board’s SAT (though that is now computerized).
Mitchell also called on Congress to pass legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, something that appears to have broad support across the GOP, including from Trump. The legislation, known as the SAVE Act, passed the House before, but stalled in the Democratic-controlled Senate; it would need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
There are other ideas, too. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who has publicly and repeatedly refuted false assertions about election fraud, is promoting a slate of proposals he has referred to as the “Georgia plan,” which he said would build public trust.
Most Americans support some form of a photo ID requirement and want to make sure only citizens are voting, he said at an American Enterprise Institute event in Washington on Nov. 18.
Other proposals in his Georgia plan would prioritize efficiency in voting and fast results. They include measures to keep lines as short as possible, require all mail ballots to arrive by Election Day — with some exceptions for military and overseas ballots — and ensure that voter rolls are as updated and accurate as possible.
Raffensperger also promoted having all states share information so they can account for voters who move, die, or have other changes in status. Accurate voter rolls, he said, help reassure the public that close elections are being decided by eligible voters.
One option for that information exchange, he noted, already exists: the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, a multistate coalition set up to help states clean their voter rolls. Georgia is still a member, but since 2022, several Republican-led states have withdrawn amid a campaign by some conservative publications and activists against the coalition. Others have yet to join, and Raffensperger said some states struggle with the cost of participating.
Raffensperger suggested that the federal government could use a grant program to entice states to join ERIC or a similar coalition in service of the cleanest possible voter rolls. Alluding to the ongoing criticism of ERIC, he acknowledged the coalition might have to be revamped in some bipartisan way, and said there would also have to be a bipartisan commitment to work through any “pain points.”
In response to a question about modernizing the National Voter Registration Act, Raffensperger said it can be tightened to protect the integrity of voter rolls. The law currently requires states to stop systematic cleaning of voter rolls 90 days before a federal election, but if states are using “objective information” to update voter rolls, he said, they should be permitted to do so up until a state’s deadline for registering to vote.
It isn’t clear what legislation a Republican Congress might consider, or whether any proposal could also win Democratic votes.
The SAVE Act, for example, had 104 co-sponsors in the House this Congress — but no Democrats signed on.
Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.
