AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would require Texans to prove their citizenship before voting in state, local and presidential elections.
Senate Bill 16 would apply to new and existing voters who didn’t provide proof of citizenship when they registered. To register, Texans would need to show a U.S. passport, birth certificate or naturalization papers. Voters who cannot verify their citizenship will only be eligible to vote in federal elections, except for the presidential race.
Supporters of the bill say it is a matter of election security, while opponents call it a solution in search of a problem because noncitizen voting is already illegal and rarely happens.
“I think we would all like to know how many folks we have who are registering to vote or seeking to register to vote, but do not have proof of citizenship. It would help us all to know what that number is,” State Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola) said. “If those are citizens whose citizenship can be verified so they can vote for all purposes as every U.S. citizen has the right to do.”
Last year, Gov. Greg Abbott announced that Texas had removed more than 6,500 noncitizens from its voter rolls since 2021.
“The Secretary of State’s office clarified last fall that in fact there were only 581 suspected non-citizen registrants,” Sen. Carol Alvorado said. “Those initial numbers have been found to be inflated and included otherwise eligible voters who had moved or died.”
Under SB 16, authored by Hughes, voters who don’t provide proof of citizenship would be placed on a separate voter roll. They would be able to cast ballots in U.S. House and Senate races but not for president.
“Our founders believed, and Jefferson wrote in the declaration, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. That’s us. We, the citizens of the United States. We express our consent through the vote, through the ballot box,” Hughes said. “One of the rights that U.S. citizens enjoy is the right to vote in U.S. elections, it is reserved to U.S. citizenship. It is something that’s been paid for dearly and that is why it’s important that citizenship be verified at the point of voter registration.”
The bill would also direct the Texas Secretary of State’s office to send counties data by the end of the year of voters who had not provided proof of citizenship.
If election officials aren’t able to confirm that a voter is a U.S. citizen, counties will notify people that they can only cast a “federally limited ballot” unless they can provide proof of citizenship.
“They’ll be told you have six days to come back and show us your naturalization information and their full ballot is counted, but they’re not removed from the rolls, they’re just treated for that federal only ballot,” Hughes said. “Nothing in here would remove them from the rolls.”
Critics said the bill would disproportionately affect voters from historically marginalized groups because some may have trouble finding paper proof of U.S. citizenship. Alvarado said 10.6 million voting-age citizens in Texas do not have a U.S. passport, and 6 million Texans do not have birth certificates that match their married names.
SB 16 would make it a felony for an election official to knowingly register a voter without verifying their citizenship. It would also direct the Texas Attorney General’s Office to investigate voters without proof of citizenship.
County registrars would be directed to use government databases to verify citizenship and notify applicants if they need to provide additional proof.
A voter who has previously provided proof or has been verified as a U.S. citizen would not have to provide proof of citizenship to update or change one’s registration.
If election officials are not able to verify current voters’ citizenship status, voters would be mailed a notice and request for proof of citizenship.
“In this day and age, isn’t it likely that people are going to miss this notice and not even reply even though they are citizens,” Alvarado said. “Thousands of properly registered voters are going to be at risk of removal from voter rolls for not responding to a mailed snail mail notice.”
The bill is modeled after Arizona’s system of split voter rolls, which has prompted lengthy legal fights that continue to this day.
In February, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled part of Arizona’s law unconstitutional, though state lawmakers there have vowed to appeal. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Arizona must allow residents without proof of citizenship to cast ballots in federal elections, which is where the idea of the federal list in the Texas bill comes from.
Even if they don’t require proof of citizenship, states have processes in place to ensure only eligible citizens vote. When registering to vote, voters are asked to attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens. There are also stiff penalties for noncitizens who try to vote, which could range from criminal charges to removal from the country.
The bill now goes to the Texas House for consideration.