Florida SB 1334/HB 991 is Florida’s SAVE Act – and like the federal bill of the same name, it won’t save anything. These bills would hurt election integrity by stopping tens of thousands of Florida voters who can’t get past red-tape show-your-papers requirements from having their voices heard at the ballot box. Under these rules, Florida voters would have to have their records checked in outdated, unreliable government databases, and if officials don’t correctly match up a voter’s record, they would need to show citizenship papers to vote. Additionally, this scheme would make running our elections significantly harder and more expensive by adding complexity, cost, and administrative delays to the voter registration process. The bottom line is that we don’t need this legislation to know that Florida’s elections are safe and secure. Voting by people who aren’t U.S. citizens is incredibly rare, and when it happens it is often a mistake. The extremely harsh consequences of deportation and prison time for a non-citizen who votes overwhelmingly ensures that only citizens are voting.
Under SB 293 in Ohio, the Secretary of State’s office is required to perform a monthly check of voter records against government databases likely to have outdated citizenship information to identify alleged noncitizens, and use that information to cancel voter registrations of people who cannot provide documents like a passport or birth certificate to prove their citizenship.
Moreover, these provisions require:
In recent elections, the United State Postal Service as well as state and local election officials have repeatedly warned that thousands of ballots would not arrive by Election Day because USPS has lacked the capacity to meet reasonable delivery expectations.This is still the case in 2025, and for the foreseeable future, as postal delays remain a persistent, nationwide problem.
In Ohio alone, more than 9,500 ballots were received during the four-day post-election window in 2024. Each of these ballots was properly completed, postmarked on time, and mailed before the legal deadline by an eligible Ohio voter. Under SB 293, these 9,500 U.S. citizens who were eligible to vote in Ohio and cast their ballots before their election would have been disenfranchised solely due to postal delivery times beyond their control.
Furthermore, this grace period builds trust in our election system. Hundreds of thousands of Ohioans trust that their mail-in ballots will be counted. Of the more than 2.6 million Ohioans who voted before Election Day last November, 803,253 (31%) voters placed their trust in the US Postal Service as their preferred method of ballot return. Disqualifying the ballots of thousands of eligible voters who reasonably expect to rely on USPS in future elections would gravely undermine this public trust.
Women who have changed their name after getting married
Transgender people who have changed their name
Newly naturalized citizens who may still show up as noncitizens in some outdated databases
Rural voters face longer and less frequent mail delivery routes
Seniors and Ohioans with disabilities, for whom voting by mail is often the only accessible option
Voters without reliable transportation, including students and low-income Ohioans, who frequently depend on the mail to cast their ballots
Increasing access to pre-Election Day voting opportunities like by-mail voting is a top priority of the Fair Elections Center’s Voting Rights Project. Read more about our policy priorities here.
OH SB 153/HB 233 would require documentary proof of citizenship, along with other sweeping changes to election code like banning the use of drop boxes and requiring multiple forms of identification to match your voter registration. The bill would also drastically change the process for citizen-led ballot initiatives.
Last updated: February 4, 2026