Government/Politics

Texas bill requiring proof of U.S. citizenship for voter registration dies at end of session

By Andrew Schneider | Houston Public Media

Published June 5, 2025 at 12:53 PM CDT

A voter registration rally at Texas Southern University on Feb. 19, 2020.

One of the most noteworthy bills that died at the end of the Texas legislative session would have required people to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in the state. Senate Bill 16, a priority measure for Republicans, passed the state Senate on a party-line vote, but never made it to the floor of the House of Representatives for consideration before the regular session ended Monday.

"This isn’t the first legislative session that we’ve seen documentary proof of citizenship bills like SB 16 here in Texas," said Jessica Hulett, the Houston regional director for VoteRiders, a nonprofit that opposed SB 16. "We saw it here in 2025. We saw it in 2023. It’s something that we do need to remain vigilant for in the future."

Hulett said that, had it passed, SB 16 would have complicated voting registration for about 1.3 million Texans, some of whom could have had difficulty obtaining the required documentation. That, she suggested, was one of the reasons the bill ultimately failed to clear the final hurdles.

"I think it sort of became obvious that the implementation of the bill would be basically impossible without inconveniencing an astonishing number of voters," Hulett said. "I think it was also probably competing with other sort of Republican priorities here in Texas. Also, I think there was just a lot of really great, strong testimony from constituents at committee hearings and during the Senate vote."

Hulett said that SB 16 fit into a national trend of efforts to require proof of citizenship to register to vote.

"There have been, I believe, in the U.S. this year, for this legislative session, more than half of U.S. states have introduced similar documentary proof of citizenship bills that, along with the SAVE Act and the executive order that happened in March, it really does display a pattern that’s happening across the U.S," she said.

Houston Public Media reached out to both the bill's author, state Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola), and its House sponsor, state Rep. Carrie Isaac (R-Dripping Springs). Neither responded to a request for comment.