Safeguard Honest Integrity in Elections for Lasting Democracy (SHIELD) Act; create.

HB 1253, the SHIELD Act, requires Mississippi voter registrars to verify citizenship using the federal SAVE system when processing new voter registrations. If the system flags an applicant as potentially non-citizen, the registrar must send a notice requesting proof of citizenship (like a birth certificate or passport) within 30 days; applicants may cast an affidavit ballot while pending verification. The bill mandates annual reports to the Secretary of State on flagged applicants and requires the Secretary to annually compare statewide voter records with the SAVE database, excluding verification data from public records. This directly affects voters whose citizenship is initially flagged during registration, with removal from voter rolls only possible after verification failure or ineligibility confirmation, not during the 90 days before federal elections.