Taking a cue from the Trump administration amid its ongoing efforts to suppress the vote and perpetuate the myth of non-citizen voting, red state lawmakers are introducing restrictive proof of citizenship bills in their state legislatures.
Experts tell TPM it is no coincidence that these various state-level bills have advanced just as the Trump administration struggles to get Congress to pass both the SAVE America Act and the Make Elections Great Again Act, which both seek to mandate documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration in federal elections.
“You’re seeing states sort of take that policy agenda and actually move with it in a way that, maybe it hasn’t been able to move to (at) the federal level,” Chris Diaz, Director of Legislative Tracking at Voting Rights Lab, told TPM.
Earlier this month, the U.S. House passed the SAVE America Act in a 218-213 vote. The bill, however, is now stalled in the Senate due to the filibuster. A previous iteration of the SAVE America Act, the SAVE Act, failed to progress out of the Senate, so the fate of this current federal legislation remains unclear. President Trump has been pressuring Republicans to change filibuster rules in order to pass the legislation, but Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has maintained that there is not an appetite for such an action in the Republican conference, at the moment.
There are currently 26 active proof of citizenship bills pending in 15 states right now, according to a Voting Rights Lab tracker.
As it stands now, three states — Florida, Utah, South Dakota — have recently introduced proof of citizenship bills that have passed at least one legislative chamber and could take effect later this year. In each of these cases, the legislation mandates that all voters provide proof of citizenship as part of the basic registration process.
Last month, the GOP-controlled Florida House passed a documentary proof of citizenship bill. A companion bill is being considered in the state Senate. Both versions of the bill mandate that citizenship status needs to be verified by records from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
In South Dakota, the Senate passed a similar bill requiring voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote. The measure has yet to be approved by the House.
And in January, the Utah House similarly approved a documentary proof of citizenship measure. The bill also lays out a process for election administrators who will be tasked with investigating a voter’s citizenship status.
“I think what we’re often seeing in these states is that there’s an effort to send political messages that don’t necessarily comport with the reality of election integrity or the needs of election officials,” David Becker, a former DOJ lawyer and the executive director and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, told TPM.
Generally speaking, these bills, both at the state and federal level, perpetuate the myth that non-citizens are voting in federal elections. There is no evidence to suggest that this is the case. And because close to 21 million voting age people do not have access to proof of citizenship documents, according to a 2024 survey from the Brennan Center, these proof of citizenship laws, which require a passport or birth certificate to register to vote, are expected to disenfranchise many eligible voters.
Although these bills are mostly being enacted in Republican-led states, experts expect Republican voters to be disproportionately impacted by these proof of citizenship bills, per a 2025 report from Secure Democracy. According to Secure Democracy’s research, the states that Trump easily won in 2024 have the largest percentage of voters without valid U.S. passports.
“All available evidence shows that only eligible American citizens are voting in our elections,” said Andrew Garber, counsel within the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program. “So these laws really aren’t gonna do anything from an election security standpoint. Our elections are already really secure and there are a lot of systems in place at the state level in all states to make sure that remains the case.”
These laws will also, as Becker pointed out, add an additional, expensive level of bureaucracy to the voting process that election administrators will need to manage. The entire effort too, will impose a cost on taxpayers with little benefit to election integrity.
“Like the SAVE Act, this would require citizens to regularly work to make up for government deficiencies, digging out and showing their citizenship papers over and over and over again when they’ve already shown them,” Becker said. “Why are we insisting that citizens have to work for government, rather than government working for us?”
