State Voter Suppression Bills Could Disenfranchise Millions Ahead of Midterms

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Voting Wrongs

As part of a broader push to both vilify immigrants and suppress voting rights, Republicans in Congress and multiple states are pushing legislation requiring voters to produce documents, such as passports and birth certificates, to prove their citizenship before registering to participate in elections. Experts are warning that proof of citizenship bills would disenfranchise millions of people as President Donald Trump and his followers test the political viability of various voter suppression tactics ahead of the midterms, including legislation that would restrict ballot access and empower partisan politicians to interfere with election administration in a number of states.

Citizenship is required by law to vote in state and federal elections, and experts have repeatedly found that votes cast by noncitizens are extremely rare. Those facts did not stop House Republicans, along with four Democrats, from passing the SAVE Act, which would require voters to produce documents, such as passports and birth certificates, to register for federal elections – a burden that could be particularly onerous on people who have discrepancies such as name changes between pieces of documentation. At least 160 similar bills have been introduced at the state level in 2025, making proof of citizenship one of the “most significant trends” in lawmaking, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

While dozens have already proved unworkable and died in committee, the Voting Rights Lab is currently tracking 58 proof of citizenship bills across 26 states. Bills introduced in Arizona and New York would protect voters from citizenship requirements, but the vast majority restrict access to the ballot, and a handful would have a mixed or unclear impact, according to the Voting Rights Lab. Two states, Wyoming and Indiana, have already passed proof of citizenship laws this year, but the document requirements are not as limited and strict as those proposed in other red states.

Pro-democracy groups say proof of citizenship bills face pushback from voters wary of unnecessary red tape, pointing to the fact that such bills have stalled in states, such as Florida, Michigan, and Texas. They suggest the SAVE Act passed by House Republicans could prove deeply unpopular and potentially generate chaos in the 2026 midterms if it becomes law. Research shows that an estimated 21 million people do not have documents, such as passports or birth certificates, readily available, including 3.8 million who don’t have those documents at all, often because they were stolen, lost, or destroyed.

For example, a proof of citizenship bill that has floundered in the Florida legislature would require even voters who have been registered for years to produce documents proving their citizenship, according to Amy Keith, executive director of Common Cause Florida, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

“The bill did not discuss what Floridians could do if their birth certificate, you know, had a different name on it because they changed their name when they got married, or if they had lost their documents in a hurricane or another emergency,” Keith told reporters on May 29. “It also attacked the IDs that voters could use when going to the polls; it would have removed student IDs, retirement home IDs, public assistance IDs, and others.”

In Texas, Republicans have faced testimony from seniors, disabled voters, and rural residents who said the proof of citizenship requirements would make it more difficult to vote. Meanwhile lawmakers struggled to explain how their proof of citizenship proposals would be funded and implemented at election offices, according to Anthony Gutierrez, the executive director of Common Cause in Texas.

Gutierrez said bills introduced in both chambers of the Texas legislature were poorly written, leaving lawmakers confused about which documents would meet the new identification requirements as anxious voters peppered them with questions and concerns.

“In the Senate and the House when we had committee hearings, the bill authors failed spectacularly to explain how it would be implemented … without inconveniencing a ton of voters of all different categories,” Gutierrez said. “The bill author in the House, over and over was answering questions just incorrectly about her own bill.”

Despite a strong Republican majority, the Florida legislature has struggled to agree on a budget, let alone new voting rules. Gutierrez said the Texas GOP focused its political capital on passing a highly controversial private school voucher law, and the proof of citizenship bills remain stalled in committee, at least for now. However, Trump has attempted to ram through a topline voter suppression agenda with an executive order issued in late March alongside a flurry of proclamations designed to massively expand his own power.

Trump’s order essentially attempts to institute the SAVE Act by presidential decree rather than through Congress and orders federal election officials to require documents such as passports for voter registration. The order would also empower Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Homeland Security to investigate and potentially interfere with election results. Democrats and voting rights groups challenged the order in court, and last month a federal judge issued a temporary injunction blocking implementation of Trump’s executive order.

The Trump administration did not appeal the injunction, but taken together, Trump’s order and the SAVE act serve a broader purpose of promoting bogus narratives about noncitizens voting illegally to sway elections. Such narratives are central to the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory that animates the far right, including parts of Trump’s base.

The attacks on voting rights have a long history, but have escalated since Trump lied about his loss in the 2020 election – a lie most Republicans professed to believe, even years after this loss. In addition to pushing legislation that erects barriers to the ballot, Republicans have aggressively pursued punitive legislation and policies in the name of “election integrity” that empower partisans and law enforcement to investigate far-fetched claims of fraud — and in some cases, blatantly intimidate election volunteers and voters in the process. After the 2024 elections, Republican candidates in states, such as Pennsylvania and North Carolina, fought in court to throw out thousands of mail ballots when election results did not go their way.

Dan Vicuna, the senior policy director for voting and fair representation at Common Cause, said bills introduced across the country in tandem with attacks on voting rights at the federal level are designed to create bureaucratic hurdles to voter registration, throw away lawfully cast mail-in ballots, and make it exceedingly difficult to use the ballot initiative process to pass reforms. These modern suppression efforts are the legislative ancestors of laws that banned women from voting, or kept Black voters from the polls with taxes and literacy tests in the Jim Crow era, Vicuna said.

“As democracy advocates defeated these measures one by one, the devious campaign to upend democracy has gotten more creative in terms of tactics and narrative,” Vicuna said. “Vote-suppressing politicians have developed neutral sounding voting restrictions that disproportionately impact communities they dislike.”

For example, in North Carolina, lawmakers are considering a bill that would criminalize voter registration campaigns by making the use of official registration paperwork by volunteers a criminal misdemeanor. In Texas, lawmakers pushed to give the state’s attorney general new powers to investigate allegations of election fraud without permission from local prosecutors. The legislation was introduced to empower Attorney General Ken Paxton, who aggressively enforces election restrictions and has sent armed police to raid the homes of elderly Latinx activists and get-out-the-vote volunteers. Lawmakers deadlocked ahead of a deadline on Saturday to complete a final version of the legislation, which now appears unlikely to pass, according to Vote Beat.

“The ultimate goal of these laws is to ensure that the public cannot hold those elected officials accountable on election day,” Vicuna said.

Other policies that undermine voting rights — such as new laws that would cut back on the number of polling places, empowering partisan poll watchers to more easily chase conspiracy theories and challenge results — are already in place across a number of states.

Meanwhile, blue states have worked to expand early voting and mail-in voting while making registration easier. A law in Illinois, for example, allows election officials to count mail ballots received up to two weeks after Election Day to account for any delays in delivery. The Supreme Court announced this week that it would hear a Republican challenge to the law arguing that all ballots must be counted on Election Day, a common legal tactic for throwing out mail ballots.

In Congress, Democrats have responded to the SAVE Act with their own bill, the Vote at Home Act, which would ensure that citizens can automatically register to vote at state motor vehicle offices, receive ballots in the mail ahead of elections, and have expanded options for voting by mail or casting a ballot in person. However, Democrats will need to win some elections before making their voting rights proposals a reality.