Mayor Francis Slay is lashing out at a proposal in the State House that would require voters to prove they are also U.S. citizens.

As our own Adam Jadhav reported yesterday, the bill, quietly passed by the House Elections Committee earlier this month, threatens to raise some of the same issues as those covered in the contentious Voter ID law, which was struck down by the state Supreme Court.

The new proposal would require voters to present proof of citizenship before casting a ballot. Currently, voters need only to swear they are citizens.

Slay, writing in his blog today, charges that the proposal would harm poor and minority voters, who tend to vote Democratic. The bill’s sponsor, Cynthia Davis of O’Fallon, is a Republican.

Writes Slay:

The intended target of this bill is the mythical illegal immigrant who votes in Missouri elections. The actual targets, though, are more likely to be the very real low-income, minority, or senior residents who don’t travel enough to have a passport, don’t drive, or can’t negotiate the complicated (and possibly expensive) task of tracking down a birth certificate and the marriage and divorce documents that prove that 80-year old “Mary Jones Taylor Smith” of Tower Grove East was born in Alaska as “Ann Mary Jones.”

Slay (left) opposes voter bill from Davis