A voter drops off a ballot at the Salt Lake County Government Center in Salt Lake City while casting ballots in Utah’s 2024 primary election. Utah and at least eight other states have passed voting laws this year that will make it more arduous for some voters to cast ballots in the November midterm elections. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
At least nine states have passed voting laws this year that will make it more arduous for some voters to cast ballots in the November midterm elections.
Lawmakers in Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Utah and West Virginia passed bills restricting voting access between January and May this year, study finds. analysis publicly available data by the Brennan Center and the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
Supporters of such laws say they protect election integrity and ensure that only U.S. citizens vote in elections.
“Protecting the electoral process to improve oversight and prevent undue influence has been a top priority of my administration since the first days of my term,” Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said in April statement announcing his signature on a novel, sweeping electoral law.
“This legislation strengthens the security, transparency and reliability of Florida’s election system.”
However, the novel rules have alarmed voting rights advocates, who say they will disenfranchise eligible voters and impose additional burdens on voters. older people, disabled people and such as married women whose names do not match their birth certificates due to a change of surname.
“In Mississippi, rural voters may have to travel hours round-trip to reach an office where they can obtain official records,” Sonya Williams Barnes, Mississippi policy director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in a March report. statement condemning a novel state law that tightens citizen verification requirements for voters.
“For people living on a fixed income, costs matter.”
Even some Republicans have noted that voting without citizenship is extremely infrequent. A year-long review of Utah’s voter rolls, completed in May, found this to be correct 27 confirmed foreigners out of over 2 million registered voters.
“This shows that the problem is not widespread (noncitizens are voting) and that, for the most part, states and our county clerks are doing a very good job of making sure our voter rolls are clean and that only eligible voters are registered to vote,” Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican, he said as reported by the Utah News Dispatch at a press conference held in May when the results were announced.
The novel set of rules applies only to state and local elections; voters who do not provide proof of citizenship under state rules can still vote in federal races. Federal law does not require proof of citizenship to vote, although only U.S. citizens can legally cast a ballot.
Many of the novel laws focus on the identification documents required to vote. Florida, Mississippi, South Dakota AND Utah currently require proof of citizenship before a person can register to vote in state and local elections. Some, like Florida, New Hampshire and Utah have narrowed the types of identification they accept.
Florida novel, broad-based electoral law was dubbed Florida SAVE Act. It won’t go into effect until next year, but it is similar to the federal SAVE Act, supported by President Donald Trump. He is currently trying to get Congress to approve the proposal by refusing to sign the bipartisan housing bill.
New law in Florida requires proof of US citizenship for anyone who registers to vote and requires the state to check registration applications against government databases. Just like the proposed one the federal SAVE America ActFlorida’s version states that if someone’s name on their citizenship document differs from the name on their current ID, they must provide proof of a legal name change. Experts believe this will be particularly burdensome married women and other people who changed their name.
Other states have given federal authorities the right to check voter rolls for people they believe are not citizens.
Omnibus in Kentucky suffrageadopted in April, includes: supply giving federal authorities the right to check voter rolls for people they believe are not citizens. MississippiThe law requires the state to check prospective voters against a federal citizenship database.
Some novel rules that don’t explicitly address election integrity could potentially affect who votes in the midterms.
New in Kansas law this requires Kansas citizens to operate the restroom corresponding to their biological sex at birth in government buildings. It also says Kansas residents must list their biological sex at birth on their driver’s license. This may invalidate one of the main accepted types identification that Kansas voters must identify themselves to vote in person. This particularly affects transgender voters because it is invalidates documents such as birth certificates and driving licenses that were previously issued to them.
Many states that have adopted novel voting laws, e.g Kentucky AND Utahare defendant by the U.S. Department of Justice for failing to turn over voter registration data to the feds.
Republican officials in these states do he resisted releasing state voter rolls that contain personal information such as dates of birth and Social Security numbers without a court order.
“Neither state nor federal law authorizes the Department of Justice to collect private information about law-abiding American citizens,” said Henderson, Utah’s Republican lieutenant governor. entry on X in February.
Many state Democratic leaders have also criticized the legislation.
“We already have a system in place to verify people’s citizenship, and it works,” South Dakota Democratic Party Chairman Shane Merrill said in a speech. statement after the state’s novel citizenship law passed in March. “We have had no incidents of non-citizens voting in our elections. Instead, this law creates a two-tier system in our state, fooling some South Dakotans into thinking they are not good enough to vote.”
Some state voting laws are currently facing legal challenges. Voting rights supporters in Florida filed a lawsuit in federal court against the state’s SAVE Act, hoping to block it before it goes into effect in 2027. Plaintiffs say the novel law creates barriers to voting and disenfranchises people who would otherwise be eligible to vote.
In New Hampshire, a federal judge knocked down a Republican-backed 2024 bill that would require strenuous proof of citizenship to register to vote; you exactly appealed against the verdict a few months until the September state primary.
Some states are still considering novel voting restrictions. The bill is expected to be voted on in the North Carolina House next week draft electoral law which passed through committee without unanimous Republican support. The legislation would, among other things, require voter identification for military and overseas voters.
Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at: avollers@stateline.org
This story was originally produced by state linewhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes the Ohio Capital Journal and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
