Key House Chairman Presses to Ban States from Counting Ballots That Arrive After Election Day

by Charlotte Hazard

House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., is planning to reintroducing legislation to reform U.S. election laws, including banning states from counting ballots that arrive after polls close on Election Day.

“We’ll be reintroducing legislation in the weeks ahead, putting forward that gold standard for states about how you should be operating and running your elections, and putting in enforcement mechanisms for states that fail to meet a high standard,” Steil told the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show on Monday. “The obvious standard that I think should be the most obvious is that ballots need to be in by the time the polls close.”

Steil said that the sole exception to this rule would be ballots from veterans who are serving active duty overseas.

In 2023, Steil introduced an election integrity bill 2023 called the American Confidence in Elections Act. However, it did not make it out of the House.

“Separate of that, everybody should be able to have their ballot in by the time the polls are closed,” he said. “It’s no different than when you were in high school when a paper was due.”

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump announced via TRUTH Social that he would lead a movement to get rid of mail-in-ballots and voting machines due to the potential they create for fraud and corruption.

In March, Trump signed an executive order titled, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.”

An aspect of the executive order is that absentee or mail-in ballots cannot be counted after Election Day.

“States like California, more or less, are seeming to be encouraging people to come in at the final hour, because they allow those ballots to arrive after the polls close again,” Steil said. “That doesn’t instill confidence in our elections. What it does is it weakens it.”

Steil said that states need to step up to improve election operations as the 2026 midterms are approaching.

“What we want is Americans to have strong conviction and a strong belief that the election system works, and we know what protocols and procedures we need to have in place,” he said. “We just need the willingness of states to step up and do it, or we need the federal government to come in and force those states to get their elections into gear.”

In June, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice Harmeet Dhillon sent a letter to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, alleging the commission violated federal law by not providing voters with a required complaint process under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

Dhillon threatened to withhold federal election funds if the matter wasn’t fixed.

“Quite surprisingly, we have learned that the Wisconsin Elections Commission has refused to provide any administrative complaint process or hearing regarding HAVA complaints against the Commission,” the letter reads. “Rather, Wisconsin has decided to rely on a 2022 state court case opining that the Commission cannot police itself.”

Wisconsin has remained front-and-center in national election reform debates. In 2020, the state was roiled by disputes over ballot drop boxes, absentee certifications, and last-minute rule changes – controversies that spawned numerous lawsuits, many of which were dismissed on procedural grounds, while some voter concerns were left largely unaddressed.

In 2020, the Wisconsin Elections Commission declared Biden the victor by a margin of 20,708 votes. In 2024, the certified result awarded President Donald Trump the state’s 10 electoral college votes, with a margin of 29,397 ballots.
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Charlotte Hazard is a reporter for Just the News.  Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
Background Photo “People Voting” by Phil Roeder. CC BY 2.0.

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