Republican lawmakers in Florida passed a bill on Thursday requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote, while also limiting forms of identification at the polls.
The bill easily cleared the state House with a 77-28 majority, hours after passing in the state Senate. No Democrats voted in favor of the bill.
Critics have claimed that the bill will disenfranchise both young and elderly voters and have suggested that thousands of people could be struck from the electoral rolls.
With the passing of the legislation, the bill moves onto the desk of Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.
“The Florida version of the SAVE Act is about to pass the Legislature,” he wrote on X on Thursday. “Although Florida has already enacted much of what the federal legislation contemplates, this will further fortify our state as the leader in election integrity.”
When registering to vote, Floridians would need to provide a birth certificate or a passport, which would be verified against government databases.
If no citizenship data was found, voters would be notified by mail. Then, they would have to prove their citizenship at a county elections office.
The bill would also mean that college IDs and identification cards provided by retirement homes would be considered invalid at the polls.
Florida Democrats have accused Republicans of trying to disenfranchise voters on a partisan basis. Tina Polsky, a Democratic state senator, blasted the legislation on the Senate floor on Wednesday.
“This is just saying to any out-of-state students or students in Florida who do not drive, ‘We do not want your vote,’” she said. “That is absolutely terrible.”
However, Republican State Senator Erin Grall, one of the bill’s sponsors, claimed that the legislation will increase voters' faith in electoral fairness.
“This is about the integrity of our elections,” she told senators on Wednesday. “It is something that puts greater trust into our system.”
According to Grall, 872,000 Florida residents do not have Real IDs. In 2023, the Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles reported that 98 percent of the state’s residents had Real IDs. It’s unclear what total population metric the state DMV uses for that figure. The Sunshine State’s total population is estimated at 23.4 million, but that number also includes non-citizens.
The bill will take effect next year, meaning the restrictions cannot be imposed before this year’s midterm elections.
Bacardi Jackson, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, slammed the legislation in a statement.
“Taken together, these changes are not neutral or harmless – they would fall hardest on low-income voters, students, seniors, women, and Black and Brown Floridians,” she said.
“Context matters,” Jackson continued. “This wave of anti-voter legislation is advancing amid ongoing abuses of power that pose unprecedented threats to American democracy.”
The Florida bill mirrors the SAVE America Act, which President Trump has previously voiced his support for.
The controversial Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would require states to remove non-citizens from voter rolls and would force Americans to provide proof of citizenship while casting their ballots.
Conflict over the SAVE Act has dominated the agenda on Capitol Hill, with Trump vowing that he “will not sign other bills” until the bill passes.
A similar law to the proposed legislation in Florida was passed in Kansas in 2013. According to federal court records, over 31,000 voters had their registrations rejected or denied because they did not provide documents proving citizenship.
Most of those voters were citizens, according to the documents, and the law was later ruled to be unconstitutional.
