STOCK PHOTO

By David L. Snelling

Miami – As Democrats are seeking to turn seats blue during the 2026 midterm elections, a new Florida law may hinder their efforts.

Acting on President Donald Trump’s executive order, Florida lawmakers sponsored a bill which would require voters to provide comprehensive proof of United States citizenship or they won’t be allowed to vote.

Under the legislation, voters must present specific forms of identification, including a driver’s license, passport and birth certificate to allow them to vote.

People registering to vote or voters needing to update their registration including name change after marriage also are required to show proof of citizenship.

Jenna Persons-Mulicka (R-Fort Myers), sponsor of HB 1381, said despite Trump’s executive order being challenged in federal court as unconstitutional, Florida needs to set some rules on the voting process to prevent fraud.

She said alleged fraudulent votes were cast by undocumented immigrants in the 2024 presidential race and previous elections in the United States.

“With every bill, we heard the same concerns: voter suppression, voter suppression,” Persons-Mulicka said, recalling earlier fights over election-related bills. “You’re making it harder for those who are eligible to vote, to vote.

Democrats, who are trying to bounce back from the past two election cycles including failure to win the U.S. presidency and other seats in the U.S. Senate and House, said the legislation would suppress voters.

State Rep. Daryl Campbel, a Democrat from Fort Lauderdale, said PersonsMulickas’s legislation will sweep voters back to the Jim Crow era, which discriminated against Black residents in the South.

 

“The requirement for citizenship verification is nothing more than a new literacy test to suppress voter turnout, just as Jim Crow laws did,” said Campbell.

Other critics of the bill said voters required to gather all the necessary documents may deter them from voting including waiting in long lines at the driver’s license stations and clerk’s office.

“This is going to be a struggle,” said state Rep. Wallace Aristide, a Democrat from Miami. “This is going to be a challenge. I just don’t see how this is going to work.”

Voting rights groups said PersonsMulicka’s legislation will take away votes for the Democratic Party.

They said the legislation may prevent U.S. citizens from registering to vote by raising unnecessary barriers.

A 2023 survey conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute, and other groups found that over 9 percent of voting-age American citizens do not have easy access to documents that prove their citizenship, including a passport, birth certificate or naturalization certificate.

That percentage was slightly higher, 11 percent, for Americans who did not identify as white.

“The survey defined easy access as being able to quickly find” such documents if people had to show it tomorrow,” said Democracy Works, a group that fights voter suppression.

Lawmakers have suspected voter fraud in some states during the past three elections.

In September 2024, U.S. House Republicans were prepared to force a government shutdown over the issue of noncitizens voting in American elections unless Democrats accepted a bill which required comprehensive proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN in October of 2024, that a series of audits in several states discovered thousands of noncitizens cast their ballots in 2020 and 2022.

“We have a number of states who have done audits of their voter rolls and found thousands of noncitizens on their voter rolls. And it’s in some of the swing states, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, states that could determine the outcome of the election,” Johnson said.

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said among 18 million voters, an estimated 6,500 were identified as noncitizens on the voter rolls in 2020 and 2022.

Of those, less than 2,000 have a voter history.

He referred the latter to the state attorney general’s office “for investigation and potential legal action,” but no one has been accused of voting illegally.

Persons-Mulicka said her bill is the only method Florida can use to combat illegal voting.

The bill goes into effect in July.

Starting in October, voters or people registering to vote must verify U.S. citizenship and need the same proof to make changes on an existing voter registration.

The legislation also makes irregularities or fraud involving voter registration, voting, or candidate petitions subject to criminal racketeering charges.