Thousands of non-citizens registered to vote in NJ due to software error, governor says
By: Joey Fox and Daniel Han (POLITICO)
EVIDENCE
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
July 21, 2026 -- TRENTON, New Jersey — More than 6,000 non-citizens were accidentally added to New Jersey’s voter rolls due to a software error at the state Motor Vehicles Commission, Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced Tuesday, with “fewer than 400” of them casting ballots in various elections since 2023.
The stunning announcement comes amid a push by Republican President Donald Trump’s administration to crack down on non-citizen voting, which the president claims — frequently without factual basis — aids Democrats in elections. Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security alleged that New Jersey had more than 35,000 non-citizens on its voting rolls.
Sherrill, a Democrat, said on Tuesday that the MVC error — which lasted from June 2023 until June 2024, predating her own tenure as governor by several years — arose during the application process for driver’s licenses and ID cards. Around 6,600 individuals marked themselves as non-citizens when they applied but were added to voter rolls anyway. The accidental voters were “scattered across the state” and registered under a variety of party labels, according to Sherrill, with the “majority” being unaffiliated voters.
Speaking with reporters at a hastily scheduled press conference, Sherrill said there’s no immediate proof that any of the roughly 400 non-citizens who cast ballots impacted the outcome of any individual election.
“We have no evidence at this time that any elections were swayed,” she said in response to a question from reporters. The state has nearly 7 million registered voters, and statewide elections typically draw between 1.5 million and 4 million votes.
The governor said that her administration’s MVC commissioner, who, along with Sherrill, took office at the beginning of this year, has begun removing the erroneous voters from the rolls. The state has also retained an outside firm, CSG Law, to conduct an independent review of the error; the timeline for the investigation remains unclear, but Sherrill said she plans on “presenting” its result.
“This entire situation is unacceptable,” Sherrill said. “It’s unacceptable that the vendor released software with such a glaring error, it’s unacceptable that the MVC took a year to get this issue fixed and it’s unacceptable that no one in the previous administration brought this to light, demanded accountability, or took action when it happened years ago.”
The Trump administration cited the news as evidence of the need to pass the SAVE America Act, a voter ID bill pending in Congress.
“Democrats and their media allies have repeatedly said it is impossible for noncitizens to register to vote, let alone cast a ballot,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “Time and again, they have been proven wrong. As President Trump has said, there is nothing more important than the integrity of our elections. And this latest incident underscores the absolute necessity of the SAVE America Act.”
Sherrill rejected any attempts by Trump to make the error into a political football, saying that the president has “zero credibility on the issue of election integrity.”
“For the past 10 years, he’s cried wolf and peddled bizarre conspiracy theories about fraud with no evidence,” the governor said.
Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, the Republican National Committee and the New Jersey GOP repeatedly sounded alarms that non-citizens had been added to voter rolls in New Jersey. According to a June 8 report from Fox News, Republicans had discovered evidence of non-citizens reaching out to county election officials and saying they had been registered to vote without their knowledge.
An RNC effort to access huge swaths of New Jersey voter roll data, however, was rebuffed on Monday by a federal judge. RNC spokesperson Ally Triolo said that her party is “examining all available legal options” on how to proceed.
New Jersey GOP Chair Christine Hanlon, who also serves as a county election official in Monmouth County, said she felt “vindicated” by Tuesday’s announcement — and argued it should lead to legislative changes, like voter identification requirements. Hanlon said the state’s voter rolls should be reexamined, and that the state should work with the federal government to ensure non-citizens are not voting.
“The entire voter file should be corrected because I do not believe this accounts for all of the issues,” she said.
Hanlon also said the Sherrill administration should disclose where and when the roughly 400 votes were cast, since some local elections come down to just a handful of votes.
Under Democratic former Gov. Phil Murphy, the MVC was frequently the source of administrative headaches, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, and drew bipartisan criticism from state legislators. The non-citizen voting error, however, thrusts the agency into an unprecedented national spotlight, and it’s sure to feature heavily in future Republican messaging on election integrity.
The snafu may also rekindle debate over a 2019 law allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain drivers licenses. It’s not immediately clear how many of the 6,600 non-citizen voters revealed today were undocumented immigrants who were able to obtain licenses under that law.
Sherrill indicated that she does not think New Jersey laws need to be revisited in response to the voter error.
“This is just to me not a problem with some of our laws,” she said. “It’s a problem with accountability. It’s a problem with making sure government is effective and running well, and it is really a lack of responsibility.”
The governor also said she was disinclined to pursue charges against any of the non-citizens who cast ballots, but warned that the Trump administration may not take the same attitude.
“It would be really the utmost hypocrisy for the state to charge them when it’s our fault,” she said. “However, I would not put it past the federal government, so we are working very hard on ways in which we can protect people here.”
New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission administrator Rosalie Johnson said that the vendor Idemia, which the Sherrill administration said was responsible for the administrative error, is being phased out with a new vendor to begin next year.
Idemia, however, laid the blame on state election officials for what it said was the state’s failing to properly establish whether those applying for licenses were eligible to become voters.
“IDEMIA’s role is to transmit information through the motor vehicle system. The voter registration information is transmitted to the New Jersey Department of State, Division of Elections, which is ultimately responsible for verifying eligibility to vote,” the company said in a statement. “Information submitted by IDEMIA must still be validated and adjudicated by the Division of Elections.”
A former communications director for Murphy, who was governor when the error occurred, did not respond to a request for comment.
Megan Messerly contributed to this article.
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But, but, but ...
But it's an insignificant number. But it did not change any elections. But it was a glitch.
But it is also evidence that our elections are not as secure as claimed, that elections officials are not on top of the job like we have been told, and that automatic motor-voter registration is glitchy. If the registration software is glitchy then how can we be sure the vote counting software isn't glitchy?
These are the invalid registrations that are still in the system. We don't know how many were removed before this latest audit. We don't know how large the problem really is.
All true.
And not only that, what would any of the new voter ID laws have done to prevent this error made by the government? Did any of those 400 votes over multiple elections over three years intentionally vote knowing they were not supposed to? And they were "non-citizens" which does not mean they were undocumented immigrants living here illegally, they were legal non-citizens of which we have about 12 million currently holding legal status but just can't vote in large elections but are often allowed to vote in local elections depending on the local laws.
So, this is not some cut and dry "Ah HA! We found it! The smoking gun!" revelation, though I'm sure that's how some rabid dipshit xenophobes will take it. What it does show is that the government bureaucracy makes mistakes but eventually finds out where they fucked up and tries to fix it, but they need to do a better job.
What this revelation doesn't call for are more ridiculous onerous voting laws specifically designed to disenfranchise minority voters being proposed as a fix because that would be monumentally stupid.
As the courts have already said of the provisions in many of these new Republican voter ID laws, " the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist,” the court said.
Court: North Carolina Voter ID Law Targeted Black Voters | FRONTLINE | PBS | Official Site | Documentary Series
No system or person or even group of people is perfect, you are 100% spot on.
I was gonna comment..."this shit again?"...but you did a fine job with your argument.
Let's turn it around. If the automated system had rejected more than 6,000 citizen registrations would that still be insignificant? A similar glitch that rejected registrations wouldn't change election outcomes, either.
The registrations required a photo ID. That's what motor voter registration accomplishes -- photo ID for voter registration. Many states require a drivers license or other photo ID to register to vote. Using some other documentation for voter registration is an even greater burden.
So, a requirement to show a registration card at the polling station would not be an onerous requirement. That's essentially what a signature requirement to obtain a ballot does.
Are the people who man polling stations and oversee vote counting paid employees or volunteers? Why place a greater burden on those workers? Why can't voters share the burden of conducting elections?
Those Black voters were still required to show some form of identification to register to vote. Voters are not allow to cast a ballot if they are not registered. So, you see, the barrier to voting is really registering to vote. It's the registration process that is supposed to be the safeguard against voter fraud. If the registration safeguards are lax that pushes the need for stricter safeguards on voting.
If registration is not secure, as the seeded example shows, then how can we certify that voting is secure?
Not really. They caught it. Without any need for a federal law or other intervention from the federal government. It’s also not really the kind of problem that MAGA have been complaining about.
Not only did the state find and fix the problem themselves, they seem to be being pretty transparent about it. And we’re talking about a blue state - which MAGA claims is opposed to secure elections. Everything about this situation flies in the face of the bullshit MAGA narrative.