ORLANDO, FLORIDA– Governors of Florida and Mississippi occurred in the measures of the law Which requires officials to verify the citizenship of voters, just as Similar legislation That pushed by President Donald Trump is stalled in Congress.
The law signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday was immediately challenged in court by civil rights organizations who said it would make it harder for Floridians to vote.
The law’s citizenship requirement goes into effect on January 1. It requires voters to provide a birth certificate, passport, or certificate of naturalization as proof of citizenship if their eligibility to vote is challenged by government officials through referrals of voter registration applications to vehicle registries.
“Many eligible voters do not have these documents and cannot obtain them for a variety of reasons — including because they were born without a birth certificate in the segregated South, because their documents were destroyed in a hurricane, or because they cannot afford the hundreds of dollars it costs to replace them,” the civil rights groups said in a lawsuit filed in federal court in South Florida.
Voting legislation is underway I pushed hard Trump’s congressional resolution would require people to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, such as a U.S. passport, a citizen’s certificate of naturalization, or a combination of a birth certificate and government-issued photo ID. It passed the House but stalled in the Senate before lawmakers took spring break.
Under Florida law, credit cards, student IDs, and retirement community IDs can no longer be used as identities when voting, and a driver’s citizenship status must be reflected on driver’s licenses starting in July 2027.
DeSantis said the law improves the security and transparency of Florida’s electoral system.
“In Florida, we will always stand up for election integrity,” the Republican governor said.
A new Mississippi law signed Wednesday requires local officials who register people to vote to conduct additional citizenship checks if applicants don’t have driver’s license numbers or can’t provide them on their voter application. The law, which takes effect July 1, requires the Secretary of State to conduct annual checks of voter rolls and compare them with an online database from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to identify any potential noncitizens who could be asked to provide proof of eligibility.
“This is another victory for election integrity in Mississippi (and America),” Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, said in a social media post. “We will continue to do everything we can to make it harder — with the goal of making it impossible — to cheat in our elections!”
The Southern Poverty Law Center said the law could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Mississippians who do not have a passport, lack a birth certificate or whose last names do not match their birth certificates due to name changes due to marriage.
Four Republican-led states — Florida, Mississippi, South Dakota and Utah — enacted laws this year to strengthen proof of citizenship requirements for voters. In Michigan, supporters of voter citizenship documents submitted 750,000 petition signatures in an attempt to get a constitutional amendment on the November ballot.
Kansas’ Republican-led Legislature has also passed legislation, though it still must go before the Democratic governor. Gov. Laura Kelly has until next week to decide whether to sign the bill and has not said publicly what she will do, though she has regularly vetoed previous GOP election bills. Supporters would need a two-thirds majority to override a veto — and thanks to Republican dissenters, the bill appears to be a few votes short of that in the House.
Any efforts in Kansas to prevent noncitizens from registering to vote are blocked One of the biggest political failures in the country In recent memory — a requirement imposed in 2013 that people registering to vote in the state for the first time provide documentation of their U.S. citizenship.
This law ended up preventing voter registration for more than 31,000 US citizens who were eligible to vote, or 12% of everyone seeking registration in Kansas for the first time. Federal courts eventually declared the law an unconstitutional burden on voting rights, and it has not been implemented since 2018.
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Associated Press writers David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri, and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas.
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Follow Mike Schneider on the Bluesky social media platform: @mikeysid.bsky.social.