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About 400 non-citizens later cast their votes, prompting a state investigation and renewed calls from Republicans for stricter voter identification laws
Governor Mikie Sherrill, Lieutenant Governor Dale Caldwell and MVC Acting Chairman and Chief Administrator Rosalie Johnson hold a press conference announcing that New Jersey’s motor vehicle system has resulted in the voter registration of approximately 6,600 people who were not U.S. citizens. Photo: Tim Larsen, Governor’s Office.
A serious software error in the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission’s system incorrectly registered about 6,600 non-citizens to vote between June 2023 and June 2024, about 400 of whom later voted, Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced Tuesday.
Sherrill, a first-term Democrat, said in a statement that she learned of the error last week and has since ordered an investigation by her general counsel and the removal of any New Jersey residents who remained registered on the voter rolls despite lacking citizenship.
“Let me be clear: This entire situation is unacceptable,” Sherrill said during a news conference Tuesday. “It is unacceptable that the provider has released software with such a glaring error. It is unacceptable that the [Motor Vehicle Commission] It took a year to resolve this issue. And it is unacceptable that no one in the previous administration brought this to light, demanded accountability or took action when it happened.”
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The governor added that the non-citizens did not sign up intentionally. They were applying for driver’s licenses and identification cards when the system asked via an electronic keypad whether they were American citizens, she said.
“These individuals answered ‘no’ when asked,” Sherrill said. “But through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway.”
The state fixed the error in June 2024. Nevertheless, Rosalie Johnson, the commission’s recently appointed administrator, has already begun the process of replacing the vendor responsible for the flawed system.
Sherrill said the approximately 400 voters did not live in any particular area and were not affiliated with any political party. Some were registered Democrats, some were registered Republicans and many were independent voters.
The state has no plans to charge voters because the problem was caused by a commission error and there is no evidence that the votes affected the outcome of any election.
“It would really be the greatest hypocrisy for the state to charge them when it is our fault,” Sherrill said. “However, I wouldn’t put it past the federal government, which is why we are working very intensively on how we can protect people.”
A spokesman later said the attorney general’s office had alerted the governor to the system error.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent a letter to New Jersey and three other states regarding potential noncitizens registered to vote, giving the states two weeks to respond to its findings.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote on X after Sherrill’s announcement that he appreciated her response to the department’s letter.
State and national Republicans quickly used the announcement to push controversial voter ID laws, such as the Trump-backed SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show proof of citizenship when registering and show photo ID at the ballot box.
“45 states have some form of voter ID. New Jersey does not,” the New Jersey Assembly GOP wrote in a social media post. “Today we learned that 6,600 undocumented immigrants were not properly registered to vote through the MVC and the system had no backing to catch it.”
“Voter ID is not a conspiracy theory,” the post continued. “It’s exactly the kind of protection that catches exactly this kind of failure. Democrats have blocked it every time.”
Matt Rooney, a right-wing blogger who runs the website Save Jersey, claimed in a post on X that the state had been “caught red-handed” and called for an investigation by the Trump administration’s Justice Department.
“This was a ‘deliberate accident,'” Rooney wrote. “The entire voter registration system needs to be overhauled. Now.”
Mullin added in his own post that “up to 35,152 potential non-citizens could be registered to vote” in the Garden State.
Sherrill rejected such statements at her news conference, saying the Trump administration had not responded to New Jersey’s request for evidence that tens of thousands of people were illegally registered on its voter rolls.
“We asked them for evidence of where they got that number and who she is,” she said. “We got nothing back… [Trump] knows that if he provides credible information, we will of course investigate.”
Other groups took a less harsh approach toward the governor, who repeatedly said Tuesday that the problems arose during former Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration.
“Although this error should not have happened, we commend New Jersey officials for publicly identifying the problem, correcting the error, providing specific details about the extent of the problem, and taking steps to remove the affected registrations,” the League of Women Voters of New Jersey said in a statement.
The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice echoed that sentiment, saying it was “encouraged to see the Sherrill administration being transparent and proactive in addressing a mistake that should never have happened.”
“It is important that we remember that those who were improperly registered were not responsible for this error; the software was,” the group said in a statement. “They did not misrepresent their status or intentionally misregister.”
The governor said she is open to suggestions that would make elections safer. But she also took aim at Trump, who she said had “no credibility on the issue of election integrity.”
“For 10 years he has been crying and spreading bizarre conspiracy theories about fraud without any evidence,” she said. “I saw the consequences of Trump’s lies on January 6th. I was at the Capitol when he and his supporters tried to steal the election and put the lives of hundreds of law enforcement members at risk,” she continued. “Trump doesn’t care about the actual integrity of the process. His only concern is himself.”
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Steve Janoski is a multi-award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Post, USA Today, Associated Press, The Bergen Record and Asbury Park Press. His reporting has exposed corruption, government misconduct and police misconduct
https://jerseyvindicator.org/2026/07/21/sherrill-says-software-error-registered-6600-noncitizens-to-vote-in-new-jersey/
