Republican state lawmakers in Florida passed a bill on Thursday that would require voters to verify their citizenship when registering and limit which forms of identification they can present at the polls. Critics say the new requirements would result in the removal of perhaps thousands of voters from the rolls and in the disenfranchisement of young voters.
The bill passed in the State House by a 77-28 vote, hours after clearing the State Senate. The votes in both chambers were along strict partisan lines, with all Democrats against the measure. Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said in a social media post on Thursday that he supported the legislation.
The bill’s enactment would make Florida the most populous state in the country to impose proof-of-citizenship requirements on voters, a critical goal for President Trump as he seeks to maintain Republican control of Congress. But the Florida requirements would take effect next year, not before this year’s midterm elections.
“This is about the integrity of our elections,” one of the bill’s sponsors, State Senator Erin Grall, a Republican from Vero Beach, said on the Senate floor on Wednesday. “It is something that puts greater trust into our system.”
Under the bill, Floridians would have to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when they register to vote. Every existing voters’ citizenship would be verified against government databases, such as Real ID, when the bill goes into effect.
If no citizenship document came up, the local elections supervisor would notify the voter by mail; to stay registered, the voter would have to bring proof of citizenship, such as a passport or a birth certificate, to this or her county elections office.
About 98 percent of Floridians have Real IDs, according to a state motor vehicle department report in 2023, though about 872,000 residents still do not, Ms. Grall said.
Separately, the bill would no longer allow voters to use either college IDs or those provided by retirement homes to identify themselves at polling places. Republicans said those types of ID were too easy to fake.
Banning student IDs drew especially strong opposition from Democrats, who accused Republicans of trying to disenfranchise voters on a partisan basis. Young voters often lean Democratic. Eight states have banned student IDs for voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan organization, but six of them still allow voters to cast provisional ballots.
“This is just saying to any out-of-state students or students in Florida who do not drive, ‘We do not want your vote,’” State Senator Tina Polsky, a Democrat from Boca Raton, said on the Senate floor on Wednesday. “That is absolutely terrible.”
The Florida bill was modeled in part after Mr. Trump’s top legislative priority, the SAVE America Act, a bill that would impose strict voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements nationally. That legislation has become so important to the president that he has said he will not sign any other bill until it passes. He has used it as leverage over Senator John Cornyn of Texas as Mr. Cornyn seeks his endorsement in a runoff election.
But studies have shown that requiring proof of citizenship across the country may end up affecting more Republicans. The states Mr. Trump won handily in 2024 have the largest percentage of citizens without valid passports, according to an analysis last year by the Secure Democracy Foundation, a nonpartisan organization that studies and analyzing voting policy.
Daniel Griffith, a senior policy director for Secure Democracy USA, a group that promotes secure and fair elections and is affiliated with the foundation, said the Florida bill includes some safeguards that could minimize how many voters get left of the rolls. For example, it accepts proof of citizenship that voters have already produced in applications for other government documents, such as Real ID.
“Nonetheless, this is creating an issue where there are going to be a lot of impacted voters that are going to need to produce that passport or that birth certificate,” he said. “And on the margin, you’re going to have eligible citizens who are not going to be able to vote.”
Federal law is clear that only American citizens can vote in federal elections, and evidence suggests that noncitizen voting is exceptionally rare. Local investigations in Florida have also turned up little evidence of noncitizens on the rolls.
Other states have adopted similar restrictions. In Arizona, voters passed a ballot initiative in 2004 that required proof of citizenship for registering. That law created a bifurcated system, in which any state election required proof of citizenship, but voters without such proof could still participate in federal elections.
Though the Arizona law has been in effect for nearly 20 years, it is still causing issues for the state’s election officials. In 2024, nearly 100,000 potential voters were at risk of losing their registration because of a glitch in state data: Voters who were issued driver’s licenses before 1996 might not have proof of citizenship on file. A court granted those voters relief before the 2024 election.
In Kansas, Republican lawmakers passed a proof-of-citizenship law that took effect in 2013. In the first election that followed, 31,089 potential voters had their registrations rejected or denied because they had failed to produce documents proving their citizenship, according to federal court records.
The court also found that almost all of the affected voters were citizens. The law was ruled unconstitutional and has not been enforced since 2018.
But as Mr. Trump has made the SAVE America Act the cornerstone of his domestic agenda, more Republican-led states have tried to pass versions of it.
In 2024, New Hampshire passed a law requiring all first-time voters in the state to prove their citizenship in order to vote. The law is being challenged in federal court.
Louisiana also passed a law in 2024 requiring voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering. This year, legislatures in South Dakota and Utah passed proof-of-citizenship laws that are awaiting signature by each state’s governor.
Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.
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