South Dakota Gov. Rhoden signed SB 175 requiring proof of citizenship for new voter registrations

On March 26, 2026, South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden signed Senate Bill 175 into law, requiring documentary proof of citizenship for anyone registering to vote in the state for the first time. Acceptable documentation includes a driver's license or non-driver ID issued after July 1, 2025, a tribal ID card, or a legible photocopy of a U.S. passport, birth certificate, or consular report of birth abroad. An emergency clause put the law into effect immediately, ahead of the June 2, 2026 primary election, rather than the standard July 1 effective date. The bill passed South Dakota's Republican-dominated Legislature by votes of 28-6 in the Senate and 64-3 in the House.

Voters who do not provide the required documentation are still registered but receive a "federal-only" ballot, which lists only candidates for federal offices such as president and Congress and excludes state and local races. The law also requires a physical South Dakota address — excluding mail-forwarding services and post office boxes — to register for state and local elections, a provision that targets people such as full-time recreational-vehicle travelers who register vehicles in the state without living there. Rhoden said the law "ensures only citizens vote in state elections," while critics including the South Dakota Democratic Party, the ACLU of South Dakota, and the League of Women Voters said it would disenfranchise eligible voters who lack ready access to a birth certificate or passport.

SB 175 is part of a broader 2026 state-level wave of documentary proof-of-citizenship laws for voter registration. Mississippi's SHIELD Act and Florida's version of the federal SAVE Act were both signed the same year; Utah enacted a similar measure and Kansas's legislature passed a comparable bill. A South Dakota Searchlight analysis of voter data found that roughly 1,500 South Dakota voters had been registered as federal-only under the law by May 2026.

Updates

2026-08-24 — League of Women Voters and Sioux Falls voter sued over SB 175's implementation [3]

On August 24, 2026, the League of Women Voters of South Dakota and Sioux Falls voter Jaysen Hill filed a federal lawsuit against South Dakota Secretary of State Monae Johnson and the state Board of Elections, represented by the ACLU of South Dakota, the ACLU Foundation, and the Campaign Legal Center. The suit alleges the law's rollout disqualified eligible voters over minor discrepancies — including rejecting photocopies of driver's licenses, tribal IDs, and non-driver IDs as proof of citizenship — without giving them a realistic way to fix their registration, and seeks a ruling that non-acceptance of ID photocopies violates the U.S. Civil Rights Act.