THE VILLAGES, Fla. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 991 — the state’s version of the federal SAVE Act on Wednesday at The Villages, expanding on years of election integrity reforms and positioning Florida as a national model at a moment when birthright citizenship is being debated at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
DeSantis opened by tracing Florida’s complicated election history back to the 2000 presidential recount, when the state became synonymous with electoral chaos.
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He said the 2018 midterms exposed new vulnerabilities, recalling how he won on election night only to watch his margin shrink days later as additional votes arrived from Broward and Palm Beach counties.
“If you have a landslide, you can still have irregularities — people just don’t fixate on it as much,” DeSantis said. “This was razor thin.”
By 2022, DeSantis said Florida had turned the page — tabulating results for the entire state within hours of polls closing.
“All you have to do is watch these elections and see how Florida performs,” DeSantis said. “We’ve become the envy of the nation. Who would have thought that 25 years ago?”
HB 991 builds on that foundation. DeSantis said the bill requires verification of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote, mandates paper ballots for all voting to allow for verifiable recounts, prohibits student IDs as valid voter identification in favor of government-issued IDs proving Florida residency, strengthens penalties for election crimes — particularly petition fraud.
The bill requires candidates to disclose any dual citizenship and attest under oath that they meet all constitutional requirements for office.
The bill also requires new and returning congressional candidates to disclose stock trading activity while serving in office.
“Our constitution in the State of Florida says only American citizens are allowed to vote in our elections, and so we need to make sure the law reflects that,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis noted that Florida’s existing laws already put the state in near-full compliance with what the federal SAVE Act would require nationwide.
“If the Save America Act federally were to be enacted, 99.7 percent of Florida voters have already complied with what that law requires,” he said.
He was pointed in his criticism of how other states run their elections, singling out California, Pennsylvania and Arizona by name. DeSantis said California sends ballots to all registered voters indiscriminately, regardless of whether they are requested.
“You’re like renting an apartment, and they’ll send you a ballot — and then they’ll send ballots for the three or four people that rented the apartment before you did,” DeSantis said. “That is totally unacceptable.”
He also criticized Pennsylvania for accepting ballots after Election Day with no postmark and said states like Arizona take weeks to produce results. In Florida, DeSantis said more than 10 million votes in the 2024 presidential election were counted and reported the same night.
Stock trading disclosure
One of the bill’s notable provisions targets congressional stock trading. DeSantis was clear about the limits of what Florida can enforce — but said transparency is a meaningful start.
“I know they’re trying to ban that practice,” he said. “We don’t have the authority to ban because they’re federal officials, but we do have the authority to require disclosure.”
Under the bill, candidates for Congress must declare whether they intend to trade stocks while serving. If they commit to not trading and then do, they must disclose that activity when they next seek re-election.
DeSantis, a former three-term U.S. congressman, said he voluntarily chose not to trade a single stock during his entire time in office.
Birthright citizenship — and Trump at the Supreme Court
As DeSantis spoke, President Donald Trump was attending oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court from the gallery, where justices were hearing arguments over the scope of the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship.
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DeSantis argued the amendment’s framers never intended it to apply to children born to people in the country illegally or to those on short-term visits.
“Someone coming here on a visit who’s foreign, having a kid, then going back — and then that kid becomes an American citizen — that kind of cheapens the whole process,” he said.
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DeSantis cited a recent analysis showing that in 2023, 9 percent of U.S. births were to people in the country illegally or engaged in birth tourism, and said the Supreme Court has never directly addressed whether the 14th Amendment applies to children born to those here illegally.
“I’m not anticipating them passing a Save Act federally, and I know there’s a lot of states that need a lot of work — including California,” DeSantis said. “But I think you guys here should be comforted in the fact that Florida, yet again, is ahead of the curve.”