Top GOPer Planning Bill to End Mail-In Ballot Grace Periods

The Republican chairman of the House’s elections oversight committee recently revealed he would soon introduce legislation to ban states from counting mail-in ballots that were sent by Election Day but arrive after.

Speaking at an American First Policy Institute event last week, Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.), chairman of the House Administration Committee, said he wants to introduce the legislation alongside the SAVE Act — the GOP voter suppression measure passed by the House in April, which would make it harder for many Americans to vote. 
Steil’s comments are the latest step in a concerted GOP campaign to end grace periods for mail ballots. President Donald Trump’s March executive order aimed to pressure states to kill the grace periods, and the Supreme Court will soon announce whether it will hear a Republican lawsuit challenging Mississippi’s grace period.

Seventeen states have grace periods of varying lengths, and a nationwide ban could disenfranchise large numbers of voters.

“I think we have an opportunity… to be in lockstep with the administration in … updating that legislation to really take advantage of the fact that now we have an ally in the White House,” Steil said. “The SAVE Act is one piece of the puzzle.”

Steil then referenced a committee hearing in April, where he blamed late-arriving postal ballots for California’s delays in finalizing election results.

“This is where the federal law has to come in — in my opinion — to force these states to abide by common sense reforms such that your ballot has to be in by the time polls close,” Steil said at the AFPI panel. 

Steil said the measure would be part of an expanded version of the ACE Act, legislation first introduced in 2023, that would cut federal election assistance funds to jurisdictions that allow noncitizens to vote in local elections (noncitizens are banned from voting in federal contests), block federal funds from going to nonpartisans organizations for voter registration or get-out-the-vote efforts, and overturn a number of Washington, D.C.’s progressive election policies. 

While the 2023 bill attracted 132 cosponsors — all Republicans — and advanced out of the Administration Committee on a partyline vote, it never came up for a floor vote. At AFPI, Steil sounded ready to expand the funding restrictions further. 

Steil credited Trump — who has continued to spread debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 election results, which he now has directed federal agencies to investigate — for leading the Republican Party on election integrity. 

The Wisconsin Republican pointed to Trump’s March executive order on voting, which expanded the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program. 

“This is where President Trump actually was spectacular,” he said. ”We can look at his executive order that gives free access to the states for the SAVE database, which allows states to remove non-citizens from their voter rolls.”

“We didn’t work so hard to get President Trump in the White House to not take and enshrine these executive orders into law and go further and actually implement true election integrity in the United States,” Steil said. “I’m bullish that with the coalitions that we have, that we’re going to be able to get some of this all the way across the line in the Senate as well.”

Since he was first elected in 2018, Steil has had just one bill he sponsored become law. Another 13 bills he cosponsored (excluding commemorative coins and post office namings) have become law. Unless Republicans decide to scrap the filibuster, it’s unlikely any new voting restriction bill would get enough Democratic votes to pass the Senate. 

Steil said it’s unclear when his new legislative package would be ready, citing the ongoing federal shutdown. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has kept the House out of voting session since Sept. 19th amid the ongoing federal shutdown.

If Republicans ban late-arriving ballots, it could ironically hurt them in upcoming elections. Due to U.S. Postal Service slowdowns concentrated in rural areas, mail-in ballots in Republican-leaning areas would be more likely to arrive after Election Day. That said, Democrats tend to vote more frequently by mail than Republicans, muddling the partisan ramifications.