About the bill
At least 22 states allow their citizens to vote by mail, and three of them even vote entirely by mail: Colorado, Washington, and Oregon. The Vote By Mail Act, H.R. 5819 and S. 3214, would allow all eligible voters in all 50 states to do so.
The legislation was Introduced in the House by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR3) and in the Senate by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), both from Oregon, which has run its elections by mail for 16 years. In these federal legislators’ eyes, the states’ experiment worked.
What the bill does
The legislation has a few major provisions. One would require every state to allow their citizens to vote by mail in federal elections. (They could maintain their vote-by-mail restrictions for state elections, such as those …
Sponsor and status
114th Congress (2015–2017)
This bill was introduced on July 14, 2016, in a previous session of Congress, but it did not receive a vote.
Although this bill was not enacted, its provisions could have become law by being included in another bill. It is common for legislative text to be introduced concurrently in multiple bills (called companion bills), re-introduced in subsequent sessions of Congress in new bills, or added to larger bills (sometimes called omnibus bills).
1 Cosponsor (1 Democrat)
Position statements
History
|
Jul 14, 2016
|
|
Introduced
Bills and resolutions are referred to committees which debate the bill before possibly sending it on to the whole chamber. |
|
May 25, 2017
|
|
Reintroduced Bill —
Introduced
This activity took place on a related bill, S. 1231 (115th). |
|
Jan 3, 2019
|
|
Reintroduced Bill —
Introduced
This activity took place on a related bill, S. 26 (116th). |
S. 3214 (114th) was a bill in the United States Congress.
A bill must be passed by both the House and Senate in identical form and then be signed by the President to become law.
Bills numbers restart every two years. That means there are other bills with the number S. 3214. This is the one from the 114th Congress.
This bill was introduced in the 114th Congress, which met from Jan 6, 2015 to Jan 3, 2017. Legislation not passed by the end of a Congress is cleared from the books.
How to cite this information.
We recommend the following MLA-formatted citation when using the information you see here in academic work:
“S. 3214 — 114th Congress: Vote By Mail Act of 2016.” www.GovTrack.us. 2016. March 21, 2023 <https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/s3214>
- show another citation format:
- APA
- Blue Book
- Wikipedia Template
Where is this information from?
GovTrack automatically collects legislative information from a variety of governmental and non-governmental sources. This page is sourced primarily from Congress.gov, the official portal of the United States Congress. Congress.gov is generally updated one day after events occur, and so legislative activity shown here may be one day behind. Data via the congress project.
