- Governor Mikie Sherrill admitted a software error allowed 6,600 noncitizens to register to vote in New Jersey.
- Nearly 400 of those individuals improperly cast ballots in recent elections.
- The software vendor IDEMIA blames the state, while Sherrill blames the previous administration.
- Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon is demanding full voter records from New Jersey within five business days.
- President Trump’s SAVE America Act, which would require citizenship verification for federal elections, has stalled in the Senate.
It took a Democrat governor who just took office to admit what many have suspected for years: the voter rolls in America are not as clean as election officials would have you believe. Governor Mikie Sherrill confirmed Tuesday that a software error in New Jersey's Motor Vehicle Commission allowed roughly 6,600 noncitizens to register to vote between mid-2023 and mid-2024. Nearly 400 of those individuals improperly cast ballots, though the state says it remains unclear exactly which elections were affected.
The disclosure sent shockwaves through a political environment already charged with debate over election integrity. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson issued a pointed statement, arguing the incident "underscores the absolute necessity of the SAVE America Act." That legislation, which President Donald Trump has championed, would require states to verify citizenship before registering voters in federal elections. It has passed the House but stalled in the Senate.
How the software error happened, and who's to blame
According to Sherrill, the problem stemmed from a "serious software error" affecting people who applied for driver's licenses or state ID cards. These applicants told the system, via keypad, that they were not U.S. citizens, yet were registered to vote regardless. The governor called the error a "reckless failure" and pointed fingers at the previous administration under former Governor Phil Murphy, saying it was "unacceptable that no one in the prior administration brought this to light."
But the software vendor IDEMIA, a French identity technology firm, pushed back hard. Spokesperson Lisa Shoemaker told the New York Post that "the 6,600 records submitted to the Motor Vehicle Commission and Division of Elections contained correct information according to the design specifications as set out by the state." She insisted that "at no point was a noncitizen ever marked as a citizen in the database" and that the company "does not control or manage voter enrollment."
A New Jersey official rejected IDEMIA's version, telling the Post: "Anytime somebody answers 'no' to the citizenship question, that record should not be transmitted to the Division of Elections." Sherrill has ordered the vendor replaced and launched an investigation.
National implications reach beyond one state
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has now entered the fray, demanding detailed personal and registration records for all 6,600 noncitizens, along with voting histories for the roughly 400 who cast ballots. Dhillon stated that "ensuring that U.S. citizens' votes are not illegally diluted by noncitizens' votes is of paramount importance." She gave the state five business days to comply.
The incident echoes smaller errors elsewhere. NBC News reports that Oregon officials in 2024 found more than 1,200 noncitizens on the state's voter rolls, though only nine appeared to have voted; California faced a similar problem in 2018. But New Jersey's numbers dwarf those cases. President Trump has also pointed to a Department of Homeland Security review claiming roughly 278,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in federal elections nationwide, concentrated mostly in California, Nevada, New Jersey and Pennsylvania — a figure state officials have not independently confirmed.
Political fallout and the fight ahead
Republicans in New Jersey, including party chair Christine Hanlon, called for a bipartisan investigation into why the registrations were not disclosed earlier. "The system and verification process must be improved in order to safeguard our elections," Hanlon said. Sherrill, meanwhile, tried to deflect criticism, alleging that "Donald Trump has zero credibility on the issue of election integrity" and that his administration "tries to weaponize elections for political gain."
The juxtaposition is hard to miss: Sherrill wants credit for exposing a problem her own state failed to catch for a year, while casting doubt on anyone else's motives for taking it seriously — including the federal officials now demanding the same records she says she's committed to transparency about.
The governor also refused to turn over personally identifying information to federal authorities, claiming the Trump administration "continues to weaponize it against people." She said she's concerned the mistakenly registered noncitizens could face immigration consequences, calling it "the utmost in hypocrisy for the state to charge them when it's our fault."
Yet the math remains uncomfortable for those who dismiss concerns about noncitizen voting. Roughly 400 ballots were cast by people with no legal right to vote — less than 0.01% of the more than four million votes cast in New Jersey's 2024 election. But as Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin put it: "Just ONE illegal vote cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen."
The system that was supposed to prevent this failed. The question now is whether Congress has the courage to pass the SAVE Act, or whether Americans will keep watching these revelations pile up while being told there's nothing to see here.
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