Thousands Of Non-citizens Registered To Vote In Nj Due To Software Error, Governor Says

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 White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. But in a post on social media, the Trump administration cited the news as evidence of the necessity of the SAVE America Act, a voter ID bill pending in Congress. “It would require states to submit voter rolls to the USCIS/DHS SAVE system for citizenship verification (which New Jersey currently does not do) — preventing this exact scenario from happening in the first place,” the White House’s rapid response account posted.

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.

A spokesperson for Idemia and Murphy’s former communications director did not immediately respond to requests for comment.