Election bills to require stricter voter registration checks in Florida near final votes
By Mitch Perry | Florida Phoenix
February 19, 2026 at 6:51 AM EST
The major election bill being pushed by Florida Republicans in the Legislature this session would require proof of American citizenship to register to vote, similar to federal legislation advocated by President Trump and Republicans in Congress.
The proposal (SB 1334) advanced on a party-line vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee on Transportation, Tourism, and Economic Development Wednesday night, with all of the Democrats on the committee opposing the measure.
Nearly 80% of Floridians approved a constitutional amendment in 2020 establishing that only a U.S. citizen can vote. But voting integrity advocates argue the state needs to be more vigorous in ensuring that non-citizens aren’t eligible to vote in the Sunshine State.
The proposal moving through both chambers of the Legislature says that the U.S. citizenship status of every Florida voter would need to be verified through the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles records before their voter registration is considered valid. Applicants would need to prove their citizenship by providing a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license, birth certificate, valid passport, or other methods.
The department said last May that 99% of Florida residents held driver’s licenses that were REAL ID-compliant.
Democrats and voting rights advocates insist they are not defending the rights of non-U.S. citizens to vote but contend that, under the bill, a certain percentage of U.S. citizens will end up being removed from the voting rolls because they can’t provide the required documents.
At issue during discussion of the proposal in a committee meeting revolved around out-of-state college students who attend universities in Florida but hold driver’s licenses from their home states. Orlando Democratic Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith provided a hypothetical case involving a Georgia resident attending Florida State University in Tallahassee.
“They need to be a Florida resident. And to be a Florida resident, you have to have a Florida Identification Card and you accept Florida as where you live,” responded Sen. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, sponsoring the bill in the Senate.
“So, you can’t provide a state of Georgia driver’s license. … They would need to change their driver’s license or ID card to Florida, and then they would provide that to the supervisor in order to show that they are in fact a resident in the state of Florida.”
Several college students who spoke during the public comment during the meeting protested that Sen. Grall wasn’t accurate.
Allysa White, a 26-year-old who recently received a master’s degree from the University of South Florida, said she grew up in Maryland before moving to Hillsborough County to attend the University of Tampa. She did not have a Florida’s driver’s license when she initially registered to vote. “I had my student ID and I had my address on campus to register to vote,” she said.
Gerri Kramer, speaking for Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer, confirmed to the Phoenix that “voters do not provide us with proof of residency when they register to vote.”
“A student can register at their parents’ home address if they consider that their permanent address, and can also include a mailing address on their application if they need their voter correspondence to be sent to them on campus,” she said — adding that the state’s online Florida voter registration application “does require a Florida driver’s license for processing.”
Later in the meeting, Grall said that if that if in fact “that loophole exists, then it’s a loophole that should be closed. If you reside in another state, you should not vote in the state of Florida. So, you have to pick a state to live in.”
Because the committee meeting ended before lawmakers had a chance to vote on the bill, legislators came back in the late afternoon.
Boca Raton Democratic Sen. Tina Polsky kicked off that discussion by reading information off of the Leon County Supervisor of Elections website saying, “as long as you live in Leon County, you can register to vote here, even if you still use your home address for other documents or pay out-of-state tuition.”
“So I think we had it wrong earlier,” she said to Sen. Grall.
Grall later responded that students needed to be legal residents of Florida to vote in Florida elections.
“The individual has to determine and know that this is where they are establishing legal residence,” she said.”This has to be where they both truly intend to to reside and made overt acts that demonstrate that intention and thereby give up residency in another state.”
Whatever happened to Kansas?
Democrats and voting-rights advocates argued their concerns about U.S. citizens being knocked off the voting rolls are well founded. They cite what happened when Kansas passed a similar proposal in 2011 that resulted in more than 31,000 U.S. citizens having their voter registrations blocked.
A U.S. federal judge found the law unconstitutional in June 2018, ruling that the law violated both the Equal Protection Clause and the National Voter Registration Act. That ruling was affirmed by a federal appeals court in 2020.
House Speaker Daniel Perez said he isn’t concerned the bill would block any U.S. citizens from voting.
“I don’t think that any bill that’s moving through the House is going to take away the ability of U.S. citizens to be able to vote,” he had told reporters Tuesday. “I have no idea what happened in Kansas. I haven’t seen that. But that’s not a concern that we have.”
While most of the public speakers opposed the proposal, there were some vocal supporters.
“Every vote cast by an illegal, non-citizen cancels out the vote of a lawful American citizen,” said Cindy Skarda. “Eight states already require citizenship to vote.” (According to Ballotpedia, 18 states include language explicitly prohibiting noncitizen voting in their state constitutions).
If signed into law, the measure would go into effect on July 1, before Florida’s primary elections on Aug. 18 and General Election on Nov. 3.
The committee vote sends the measure to the Senate Rules Committee before reaching the floor of that chamber. The bill’s House companion (HB 991) has already passed through its two assigned committees and is headed to the full House for consideration.
One difference in the two bills is when they would go into effect. The House bill would start on Jan. 1, 2027, while Grall’s bill in the Senate would start on July 1, 2026 — a date that the Democrats said Wednesday was too soon to make for an orderly transition.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
The proposal (SB 1334) advanced on a party-line vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee on Transportation, Tourism, and Economic Development Wednesday night, with all of the Democrats on the committee opposing the measure.
Nearly 80% of Floridians approved a constitutional amendment in 2020 establishing that only a U.S. citizen can vote. But voting integrity advocates argue the state needs to be more vigorous in ensuring that non-citizens aren’t eligible to vote in the Sunshine State.
The proposal moving through both chambers of the Legislature says that the U.S. citizenship status of every Florida voter would need to be verified through the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles records before their voter registration is considered valid. Applicants would need to prove their citizenship by providing a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license, birth certificate, valid passport, or other methods.
The department said last May that 99% of Florida residents held driver’s licenses that were REAL ID-compliant.
Democrats and voting rights advocates insist they are not defending the rights of non-U.S. citizens to vote but contend that, under the bill, a certain percentage of U.S. citizens will end up being removed from the voting rolls because they can’t provide the required documents.
At issue during discussion of the proposal in a committee meeting revolved around out-of-state college students who attend universities in Florida but hold driver’s licenses from their home states. Orlando Democratic Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith provided a hypothetical case involving a Georgia resident attending Florida State University in Tallahassee.
“They need to be a Florida resident. And to be a Florida resident, you have to have a Florida Identification Card and you accept Florida as where you live,” responded Sen. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, sponsoring the bill in the Senate.
“So, you can’t provide a state of Georgia driver’s license. … They would need to change their driver’s license or ID card to Florida, and then they would provide that to the supervisor in order to show that they are in fact a resident in the state of Florida.”
Several college students who spoke during the public comment during the meeting protested that Sen. Grall wasn’t accurate.
Allysa White, a 26-year-old who recently received a master’s degree from the University of South Florida, said she grew up in Maryland before moving to Hillsborough County to attend the University of Tampa. She did not have a Florida’s driver’s license when she initially registered to vote. “I had my student ID and I had my address on campus to register to vote,” she said.
Gerri Kramer, speaking for Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Craig Latimer, confirmed to the Phoenix that “voters do not provide us with proof of residency when they register to vote.”
“A student can register at their parents’ home address if they consider that their permanent address, and can also include a mailing address on their application if they need their voter correspondence to be sent to them on campus,” she said — adding that the state’s online Florida voter registration application “does require a Florida driver’s license for processing.”
Later in the meeting, Grall said that if that if in fact “that loophole exists, then it’s a loophole that should be closed. If you reside in another state, you should not vote in the state of Florida. So, you have to pick a state to live in.”
Because the committee meeting ended before lawmakers had a chance to vote on the bill, legislators came back in the late afternoon.
Boca Raton Democratic Sen. Tina Polsky kicked off that discussion by reading information off of the Leon County Supervisor of Elections website saying, “as long as you live in Leon County, you can register to vote here, even if you still use your home address for other documents or pay out-of-state tuition.”
“So I think we had it wrong earlier,” she said to Sen. Grall.
Grall later responded that students needed to be legal residents of Florida to vote in Florida elections.
“The individual has to determine and know that this is where they are establishing legal residence,” she said.”This has to be where they both truly intend to to reside and made overt acts that demonstrate that intention and thereby give up residency in another state.”
Whatever happened to Kansas?
Democrats and voting-rights advocates argued their concerns about U.S. citizens being knocked off the voting rolls are well founded. They cite what happened when Kansas passed a similar proposal in 2011 that resulted in more than 31,000 U.S. citizens having their voter registrations blocked.
A U.S. federal judge found the law unconstitutional in June 2018, ruling that the law violated both the Equal Protection Clause and the National Voter Registration Act. That ruling was affirmed by a federal appeals court in 2020.
House Speaker Daniel Perez said he isn’t concerned the bill would block any U.S. citizens from voting.
“I don’t think that any bill that’s moving through the House is going to take away the ability of U.S. citizens to be able to vote,” he had told reporters Tuesday. “I have no idea what happened in Kansas. I haven’t seen that. But that’s not a concern that we have.”
While most of the public speakers opposed the proposal, there were some vocal supporters.
“Every vote cast by an illegal, non-citizen cancels out the vote of a lawful American citizen,” said Cindy Skarda. “Eight states already require citizenship to vote.” (According to Ballotpedia, 18 states include language explicitly prohibiting noncitizen voting in their state constitutions).
If signed into law, the measure would go into effect on July 1, before Florida’s primary elections on Aug. 18 and General Election on Nov. 3.
The committee vote sends the measure to the Senate Rules Committee before reaching the floor of that chamber. The bill’s House companion (HB 991) has already passed through its two assigned committees and is headed to the full House for consideration.
One difference in the two bills is when they would go into effect. The House bill would start on Jan. 1, 2027, while Grall’s bill in the Senate would start on July 1, 2026 — a date that the Democrats said Wednesday was too soon to make for an orderly transition.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.