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ORLANDO, Fla. — <\/span>Governors in Florida and Mississippi signed into law measures<\/a> that require officials to verify the citizenship of voters, just as similar legislation<\/a> being pushed by President Donald Trump has stalled in Congress.<\/p>\n The law signed Wednesday by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was immediately challenged in court by civil rights organizations that said it will make it harder for Floridians to vote. <\/p>\n The citizenship provision of the law goes into effect Jan. 1. It requires voters to provide a birth certificate, passport or naturalization certificate as proof of citizenship if their eligibility to vote is challenged by government officials through cross-referencing voter registration applications with motor vehicle records.<\/p>\n \u201cMany eligible voters do not have these documents and cannot obtain them for a variety of reasons — including because they were born without a birth certificate in the segregated South, because their documents were destroyed in a hurricane, or because they cannot afford the hundreds of dollars it costs to replace them,\u201d the civil rights groups said in a lawsuit filed in federal court in South Florida.<\/p>\n The voting legislation being pushed aggressively<\/a> by Trump in Congress would mandate that people provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, such as a U.S. passport, citizen naturalization certificate or a combination of a birth certificate and government-issued photo identification. It passed the House but was stalled in the Senate before lawmakers took a spring recess.<\/p>\n Under the Florida law, credit cards, student IDs and retirement community identifications can no longer be used as IDs when voting, and the citizenship status of a driver must be reflected on driver’s licenses starting in July 2027. <\/p>\n DeSantis said the law improves the security and transparency of Florida’s election system.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Florida, we will always stand up for election integrity,\u201d the Republican governor said.<\/p>\n The new Mississippi law signed Wednesday requires local officials registering people to vote to run additional citizenship checks if applicants don\u2019t have or can’t provide driver\u2019s license numbers on their voter application. The law, which takes effect July 1, also requires the secretary of state to run annual checks of the voter rolls against an online database from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to flag any potential noncitizens who could be asked to provide proof of their eligibility.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is another win for election integrity in Mississippi (and America),\u201d Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, said in a social media post. \u201cWe will continue to do everything in our power to make it infinitely harder – with a goal to make it impossible – to cheat in our elections!\u201d<\/p>\n The Southern Poverty Law Center has said that the law could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Mississippians who don’t have a passport, lack a birth certificate or whose last names don’t match their birth certificates because of name changes due to marriage.<\/p>\n Four Republican-led states \u2013 Florida, Mississippi, South Dakota and Utah \u2013 have enacted laws this year to strengthen proof-of-citizenship requirements for voters. In Michigan, supporters of voter citizenship documentation have submitted 750,000 petition signatures in a bid to get a constitutional amendment on the November ballot. <\/p>\n The Republican-led Kansas Legislature also has passed legislation, though it still must go before the Democratic governor. Gov. Laura Kelly has until next week to decide whether she\u2019ll sign the bill and hasn\u2019t said publicly what she will do, though she has regularly vetoed past GOP-election bills. Supporters would need a two-thirds majority to override a veto \u2014 and thanks to Republican dissenters, the bill appeared to be a few votes short of that in the House.<\/p>\n Any efforts in Kansas to prevent noncitizens from registering to vote are shadowed by one of the state\u2019s biggest political fiascos<\/a> in recent memory \u2014 a requirement imposed in 2013 that people registering to vote in the state for the first time provide documentation of their U.S. citizenship. <\/p>\n That law ended up blocking the voter registrations of more than 31,000 U.S. citizens who were otherwise eligible to vote, or 12% of everyone seeking to register in Kansas for the first time. Federal courts ultimately declared the law an unconstitutional burden on voting rights, and it hasn\u2019t been enforced since 2018.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Associated Press writers David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri, and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n