South Carolina lawmakers have completed the final legal step to enshrine a citizens-only voting requirement in the state constitution, ratifying a measure that voters overwhelmingly approved two years earlier, according to Ballotpedia News’ tracking of the state’s 2026 legislative session.
What the amendment does
The measure, ratified through Senate Bill 582, formally amends the South Carolina Constitution to state that only United States citizens may vote in state or local elections — closing off any theoretical path for local jurisdictions to extend voting rights to noncitizen residents in municipal elections, an idea that has been debated and occasionally adopted in a handful of cities elsewhere in the country. South Carolina voters approved the underlying constitutional change by a lopsided 86%-14% margin in the 2024 general election, but state law required the legislature to pass a follow-up ratification bill to make the change formally operative. The state Senate passed the ratification bill, S 582, 39-0 on April 24, 2025, and the House followed with a 106-6 vote on May 5, with 80 Republicans and 26 Democrats voting in favor and only six Democrats opposed, according to legislative records. The bill amends Section 4 of Article II of the state constitution so that it now reads that only a U.S. citizen and state resident age 18 or older who is properly registered is entitled to vote.
Why ratification took two years
Under South Carolina’s constitutional amendment process, voter approval at the ballot box is only the first step; the General Assembly must subsequently pass enabling legislation actually incorporating the new language into the constitution’s text. That ratification bill, S 582, cleared the legislature during its 2026 session, which adjourned May 14 after lawmakers passed four election-related bills in total – a notably smaller slate than prior years, with only 36 election bills introduced in 2026 compared with 76 in 2025, according to Ballotpedia’s tracking of the session.
Largely symbolic, but not without stakes
Because federal law already bars noncitizens from voting in state and federal elections nationwide, and South Carolina had no municipalities extending local voting rights to noncitizens, the amendment’s practical effect is limited in the near term. Supporters nonetheless argue it forecloses any future local effort to extend such rights and sends a clear signal about the state’s electoral policy, while critics of similar measures in other states have described them as largely preemptive, symbolic actions targeting a practice that is not currently occurring.
Part of a broader legislative package
Alongside the citizenship ratification, the 2026 session also produced a new law changing when municipal elections may be held. House Bill 3556 establishes specific dates for municipal elections in odd-numbered years and restricts standalone elections commissions to municipalities with more than 10,000 residents; Gov. Henry McMaster signed that bill on May 19, according to Ballotpedia’s reporting. The remaining two election-related measures passed in 2026 dealt with narrower administrative matters, including voter-registration recordkeeping, rounding out what legislative trackers describe as one of the lightest years for election legislation in South Carolina in recent memory, a marked contrast from the flurry of bills introduced in most other states this cycle over redistricting, voter ID and citizenship-verification disputes.
A nationwide pattern
South Carolina joins a growing list of states that have moved in recent years to constitutionally bar noncitizen voting at the state level, a trend that accelerated after a small number of U.S. cities — none in South Carolina — began allowing noncitizen residents to vote in local elections. Supporters describe the wave of state constitutional amendments as preserving citizens-only voting as the national norm, while critics say the amendments largely address a hypothetical rather than an active practice within those states. South Carolina’s 86%-14% vote margin in 2024 was among the most lopsided of any state to take up the question, reflecting how uncontroversial the citizens-only principle proved to be with voters even as the amendment’s practical necessity remained a point of debate among policy analysts.
What’s next
With ratification complete, the citizens-only voting language is now formally part of the South Carolina Constitution, closing out a process that began with the 2024 ballot vote. Election administrators do not expect the change to alter day-to-day voting procedures for the 2026 midterms, since noncitizen voting was already prohibited under existing state and federal law, but the amendment forecloses any future legislative or local effort to change that policy without another constitutional vote.
