House Administration subcommittee hears competing views on updating the NVRA

Chairwoman Lee and ranking members of the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections convened a hearing to examine potential updates to the National Voter Registration Act on Jan. 9, 2026, hearing testimony from legal and voting-rights experts about how to balance accurate voter rolls with access to the ballot.

The hearing opened with Chairwoman Lee framing the panel's agenda as a modernization effort. She said that while the NVRA increased registration and reduced barriers, some language is now ambiguous and creates obstacles for election officials. "The NVRA does not currently require an applicant to prove their citizenship beyond an attestation clause and a signature," she said, and cited a recent case in Maryland involving an individual who registered twice as an example of why Congress should review the law.

Why it matters: Members and witnesses agreed on two goals'accurate lists and accessible registration'but differed over how to achieve them. Witnesses offered technical, legal and operational fixes ranging from clarifying statutory terms to expanding data-sharing requirements and preserving a 90-day quiet period that prevents last-minute removals.

Mark Braden, of counsel at BakerHostetler LLP, told the committee that motor-voter expansions raised tradeoffs between registration quantity and list quality and warned that mail voting increases risks if lists are poor. "If the list isn't any good, the people being asked to vote or trying to vote by mail will be bad," Braden said, adding that he had seen estimates of first-class mail delivery failure rates ranging from "half a percent to 4%."

Professor Michael Morley, faculty director of the Election Law Center at Florida State University College of Law, urged statutory clarifications. He recommended replacing the NVRA's strict "necessary" standard with a lower threshold that would allow states to seek information "reasonably related to confirming an applicant's eligibility," and suggested amending the NVRA so officials could remove records that were ineligible from the outset after notice and an opportunity to respond.

Sophia Lakin, director of the ACLU Voting Rights Project, defended the NVRA's safeguards and warned that poorly designed or poorly timed purges can strip eligible citizens from the rolls. Lakin told the committee that "elections officials removed more than 21,000,000 voters from the rolls in the last 2 years through routine, lawful maintenance," and said confirmation notices often preserved registrations when voters replied that they had not moved.

On the NVRA's quiet period, witnesses differed about scope and definition. Morley suggested Congress clarify what "removal" and "systematic" mean in statute so officials can take appropriate steps short of permanent removal (for example, moving a registration to inactive status) without violating the blackout rule.

Members raised concrete proposals. Some urged expanding access to databases such as the federal SAVE system to improve cross-checking for citizenship records; others emphasized automatic and online registration to reduce barriers. Ranking Member Sewell repeatedly stressed that there is "no widespread voter fraud" and warned against policies that would disenfranchise eligible voters.

The committee took no legislative action. Ranking Member Sewell asked unanimous consent to enter a League of Women Voters statement into the record; Chairwoman Lee granted the request "without objection." The committee adjourned with members allowed five legislative days to submit additional materials.

The hearing record remains open for five legislative days, and members may submit follow-up questions in writing.