JACKSON, Miss.—Mississippi Republicans are pushing to verify the U.S. citizenship of every voter on the state’s rollbooks annually under the SHIELD Act, a bill the Mississippi Legislature is preparing to send to Gov. Tate Reeves.
Although Senate Elections Committee Chairman Sen. Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, said it is rare for a non-citizen to vote or register to vote in Mississippi, the Safeguard Honesty Integrity in Elections for Lasting Democracy Act would give further authority to the Mississippi secretary of state to verify citizenship.
Senate Bill 2588 would allow the Mississippi secretary of state to enter the entire voter rollbook, also known as the Statewide Elections Management System, into the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements every year. The system is an online service for government agencies used to verify immigration and citizenship status.
“When you go through the voter rolls and you find a non-U.S. citizen, does the secretary of state have any power to turn that over to authorities?” Sen. Don Hartness, R-Ellisville, asked England on the Senate floor on Feb. 5.
“That isn’t addressed in this legislation,” the chairman responded. “What happens now is the registrar will flag that. What they do is run it through DPS’s records and if they find that someone has checked a box that they’re not a U.S. citizen, then they will send a notification through first-class mail … to let them know they were flagged and then they have to bring a proof of citizenship there. If they do show up to vote, they have to vote affidavit and that vote will be marked as pending until they show up with that and if they don’t have proof of citizenship, it’ll be shown as rejected.”
Within 30 days of receiving notice from the State, the SHIELD Act says applicants who are registering to vote would have to prove U.S. citizenship via passport, birth certificate, U.S. naturalization documentation or any other proof of citizenship that the Federal Immigration Reform and Control Act established in 1986.
The Mississippi secretary of state would also have the responsibility to compare the state’s rollbook records with the SAVE database “no later than one hundred eighty (180) days before a regularly scheduled federal general election.” The secretary would share any potential ineligible matches with local election officials, who would send the notices to voters.
S.B. 2588 does not include criminal penalties for non-citizens who attempt to vote or register to vote in Mississippi.
The Mississippi Legislature’s SHIELD Act originated around the same time the U.S. House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, which would require people registering to vote to show a passport or birth certificate to prove U.S. citizenship. The legislation would also require voters to provide a valid photo ID when voting, which is a law Mississippi already has in place. This Trump-backed bill comes during the same year as the midterm elections for U.S. Congress.
The U.S. House passed the SAVE America Act by a 218-213 vote on Feb. 11. The bill has stalled in the U.S. Senate, though Republicans are pressing forward with debating the bill on the Senate floor. Republicans attempted to pass the same legislation last year, with the U.S. House approving it, but the U.S. Senate killed it.
The SHIELD Act is similar to House Bill 1510 from the 2022 legislative session, which permitted the Mississippi secretary of state to run individual voters registered in the Statewide Elections Management System through the federal verification system after comparing driver’s license and identification information with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety.
England told the Mississippi Free Press that the SHIELD Act is different from the 2022 bill because the Mississippi secretary of state would be able to run the whole voter rollbook through the SAVE system annually instead of running individual cases at random times.
“The key difference is why we’re doing it now instead of doing it before, it’s a free federal service—you used to have to pay for it,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on March 12.
The State “may not” remove a voter from the rollbook “based on a SAVE match” and would not cancel the voter’s registration unless the voter failed to respond to the verification request or presented information that confirmed they are ineligible to vote at least 90 days before a federal election, the SHIELD Act says.
England said about 15 noncitizens had attempted the register to vote out of the 1.7 million Mississippians who are registered to vote when Sen. Johnny DuPree, D-Hattiesburg, asked on the Senate floor on Feb. 5.
“Why are we putting so much attention to 15 individuals? And you said yourself that some of those were just checking a box that they should not have checked so it could be less than 15,” DuPree asked England.
“Yes, and Sen. DuPree, I thank you for that question because election integrity a lot of times depends on perception of the election, it depends on voter confidence, but we want voters confident in our elections,” England replied. “And even if we have one instance of a voter who’s not supposed to be voting in our elections and once that’s reported, the integrity of our system and the confidence that voters have goes way down and we don’t want that. We want more people voting; we want to get rid of voter apathy.”
The Mississippi Free Press reached out to Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson’s office to verify the number of noncitizens attempting to register to vote.
“We found a range of persons who were sent over as a person who registered with DPS but who did in fact not register (and were non-citizens) to actual non-citizens who registered to vote,” Communications Director Elizabeth Johnson said in a March 13 statement to the Mississippi Free Press. “Those cases in which non-citizens registered were transferred to law enforcement.”
She did not respond to a question about what year the SOS office found noncitizens attempting to register to vote.
The Senate passed the SHIELD Act by a 33-17 vote on Feb. 5 and the House passed an amended version by a 80-41 vote on March 4. The Legislature is now preparing the bill to send to Gov. Reeves.
The Mississippi Democratic Party criticized Republicans in a March 24 press release for passing the bill because of the 647,000 Mississippi women whose last name does not match their birth certificates and the roughly 80% of Mississippians who do not have a passport.
“More than 21.3 million Americans lack immediate access to documentary proof of citizenship. More than 140 million Americans do not have a passport. Elderly Americans are among the least likely to have one. Republicans aren’t solving a problem, they’re creating one on purpose,” Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Rep. Cheikh Taylor, D-Starkville, said. “There is no voter fraud crisis in Mississippi. There is a participation crisis, and instead of addressing it, they have made it worse. The SHIELD Act is a poll tax dressed up in modern language, and Mississippi Democrats will fight it with everything we have.”