New voters in South Dakota will have to prove that they are United States citizens in order to cast a ballot in state and local races under a bill signed on Thursday by Gov. Larry Rhoden.
The new law, which does not apply to South Dakotans already on the voter rolls, comes amid a national push by Republicans to tighten voting rules and root out voting by noncitizens, which is already illegal and believed to be rare.
“This bill ensures only citizens vote in state elections, keeping our elections safe and secure,” said Mr. Rhoden, who is seeking election to a full term this year and is facing a crowded Republican primary field. He replaced Kristi Noem, who left the governor’s office last year to become homeland security secretary under President Trump.
South Dakota is one of a handful of Republican-led states to advance its own proof of citizenship measures this year as President Trump pushes Congress to pass the SAVE America Act. The federal legislation — which would establish strict new national requirements on voter registration, voter identification and mail-in balloting — has stalled in the Senate because of Democratic opposition.
Critics describe proof of citizenship bills as solutions in search of a problem, with far greater potential to disenfranchise eligible voters than to prevent ineligible ones from casting a ballot.
“Noncitizens cannot vote in South Dakota — this bill is wholly unnecessary,” State Representative Erik Muckey, a Democrat, said during the floor debate. He was one of three members of his chamber to vote against the bill.
The South Dakota measure, which nearly all Republicans and some Democrats in the State Legislature supported, asks new voters to provide a passport, birth certificate, tribal identification card or another document to prove that they are U.S. citizens. Those who do not show one of those documents will be able to cast a ballot only in federal races, not state or local ones. Mr. Rhoden’s office described it as “the South Dakota SAVE Act.”
Republican supporters of the measure said the state’s current method of asking voters to affirm that they are citizens without verifying the claim was insufficient.
“This isn’t an onerous requirement,” said Senator John Carley, a Republican, during a committee hearing. “We shouldn’t have our voting requiring on the honor system, obviously.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota warned that the law “would place serious and unnecessary burdens on everyday South Dakotans and strain already overburdened election officials.”
South Dakota is one of the country’s most overwhelmingly Republican states, and it has often served as a laboratory for conservative policymaking that later spreads to other places. Republicans hold every statewide partisan office, every seat in the congressional delegation and all but a handful of state legislative seats in South Dakota.
With the federal SAVE America Act stuck in Congress, Republicans in statehouses have moved their own bills in recent weeks. Already this year, lawmakers in Florida, Mississippi and Utah have passed legislation that, if signed into law, would require checking the citizenship status of registered voters.
Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana and New Hampshire have enacted similar policies in the past, many of which have faced court challenges. A federal judge struck down the Kansas law.
Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.
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