Texas Senate unveils bill requiring voters to prove citizenship

AUSTIN – With unanimous Republican support, the Texas Senate appears poised to pass a priority bill requiring Texans to prove their citizenship before they could vote in state, local, and presidential elections.

Senate Bill 16, which would apply to new registrants as well as existing registered voters who did not provide proof of citizenship when they registered. That would include voters who registered through a voter registration drive or by mail, rather than while obtaining a Texas drivers license or state ID through the Department of Public Safety.

Voters who don’t provide proof of citizenship would be placed on a separate voter roll and could cast ballots only in U.S. House and Senate races. Voters on that list wouldn’t be allowed to vote for president under the bill, which experts say could invite a legal challenge.

The bill would create a new barrier to voting for some of Texas’ more than 18 million registered voters, and could diminish the rights of eligible voters who are not able to provide documents proving their U.S. citizenship.

It would subject election officials to potential criminal penalties, making it a felony punishable by jail time to knowingly register an applicant without first verifying that they are citizens. .

It would also require election officials to provide the state attorney general’s office a list of voters who have not provided proof of citizenship, and calls for the attorney general to prosecute any offenses if local officials do not.

The bill is part of an accelerating campaign by Republicans in Texas and nationwide to draw attention to the potential threat of noncitizen voting, which is already illegal and which rarely occurs in any significant numbers. Republicans control the Texas Legislature. All 20 GOP senators signed on as authors to SB 16. Similar bills have been filed in the House.

Last summer, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a press release boasting that the state had removed more than potential 6,500 noncitizens from its voter rolls. In October, an investigation by Votebeat, ProPublica and the Texas Tribune found that Abbott’s numbers were inflated and in some cases, wrong.

Most states currently do not require proof of citizenship for voters, but anyone registering to vote must attest under penalty of perjury that they are a citizen. A noncitizen who tries to vote faces severe penalties, including felony charges and loss of residency status. Voter registrars in counties across the country have processes in place to check that only eligible citizens make it onto the voter rolls.

Arizona is the only state with a long history of enforcing a proof-of-citizenship requirement. Other states have passed similar requirements, but their provisions vary, and some aren’t enforced pending the outcome of legal challenges. Republican lawmakers in other states, including Michigan, are considering amending their state constitutions to require documented proof of citizenship to register to vote.

In Texas, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in January added citizenship-proof legislation to his list of priorities for the Senate this session.

SB 16 is co-authored by Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Republican from Central Texas who championed Texas’ sweeping 2021 voting bill. It would replicate the split voter registration system used in Arizona, where people who do not show proof of citizenship to register to vote are placed on a “federal only” voter list and allowed to vote only in federal elections.

The Texas bill would exclude the federal-only voters from presidential elections, specifically saying voters’ choices would be counted only in races for U.S. senator or representative. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in February ruled unconstitutional a similar provision in an Arizona law, a decision state lawmakers there said they would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Arizona’s law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote was passed in 2004. It also prompted lengthy legal fights that continue even now. The “federal only” list emerged after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that under federal law, Arizona must allow residents who do not provide such proof to cast ballots in federal elections.

This system has disproportionately affected voters from historically marginalized groups in Arizona.

Arizona had 34,933 federal-only voters, who made up less than 1% of the roughly 4.4 million active voters eligible for the November 2024 election. A Votebeat analysis found that the list includes disproportionately high numbers of voters who live on Native land, on college campuses, and at the state’s main campus for homeless people. Such voters also were generally younger than the overall voting-age population in the state, and were less likely to vote this past November than voters who had provided proof of citizenship, the analysis found.

Arizona officials discovered last summer that for decades, the state mistakenly labeled some voters as having provided proof of U.S. citizenship, when in fact they had never been asked to do so.

The Texas legislative proposal is the latest of at least five bills requiring documented proof of citizenship that were filed in December. This one, however, is backed by 20 influential Republican senators, including some members of the State Affairs Committee, which reviews legislation and decides whether it moves forward in the Senate. The committee has in recent years voted to approve laws that would tighten voting access. This bill would require Texans registering to vote to provide — along with their paper application — documented proof of citizenship, in person or by mail, to their county voter registrar or to the Texas Department of Public Safety, which issues driver’s licenses.

The proposal says the following documents would be accepted as documented proof of citizenship: a U.S. passport; a passport card; a certified copy of a birth certificate issued by a U.S. state or territory; “United States citizenship papers”; identification issued by the U.S. agency responsible for citizenship and immigration; and for citizens born outside the U.S., a consular report of birth abroad. The list does not include tribal documents, which Arizona does accept.

As for Texans who are already registered to vote, the bill directs the Texas Secretary of State’s Office to by the end of the year, send all counties data of voters who had not provided proof of citizenship prior to September 2025. It directs election officials to document every effort made to check for such proof. If election officials aren’t able to find information about whether a voter is a U.S. citizen, the bill requires that they notify the person that they are qualified to vote only a “federal limited ballot” unless they’re able to provide proof.

The bill means that “everyone, whether you’re registered now or whether you want to register, has to comply” with the proof-of-citizenship requirement, said Daniel Griffith, senior director of policy at Secure Democracy Foundation. “So if you haven’t already, you have to provide this information, and you have to make sure that DPS or [a voter registrar] has noted that you have this information.”

A voter who has previously provided proof or has been verified as a U.S. citizen is not required to provide proof when submitting an update, change, or correction to the voter registrar, the bill says.

The provision could affect voters who registered prior to the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which created voter identification procedures, and the 2005 Real ID Act, which requires people obtaining a state-issued ID or driver’s license to provide proof of citizenship or proof of lawful presence in the U.S.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.