The biometrics and cryptography company that New Jersey officials said was responsible for adding it in error Thousands of non-citizens who registered on voter rolls denied any mistreatment, saying the state was responsible for voter registration.
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced Tuesday that a serious software error caused by IDEMIA, a global French company, caused about 6,600 non-citizens to be inadvertently registered to vote between June 2023 and June 2024. Fewer than 400 cast ballots illegally, Sherill said, and a preliminary review found the votes did not influence elections.
The debacle comes amid intensifying debates over election integrity, exacerbated by President Donald Trump’s widely debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him. Trump mentioned the incident during a speech in Georgia on Wednesday, falsely claiming that “thousands and thousands of votes” were cast illegally.
IDEMIA said in a statement that it has worked with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission (MVC) for more than 40 years, supporting the system that allows eligible residents to indicate they want to register as a voter when applying or renewing a license or state ID.
“IDEMIA’s mission is to transmit information through the motor vehicle system,” the statement said, adding that voter registration data is transmitted to the state’s elections department, which is “ultimately” responsible for verification. “Information submitted by IDEMIA remains to be validated and adjudicated by the Department of Elections.”
On Wednesday, a Sherrill spokesman said IDEMIA’s system error resulted from the records of people who answered “no” to the citizenship question being incorrectly submitted to the elections department.
IDEMIA denied the allegations in a statement to NOTUS, saying the 6,600 files submitted to the MVC and the Division of Elections contained accurate information “according to the design specifications established by the state.” The 6,600 people checked “yes” for wanting to register to vote and “no” for citizenship, IDEMIA said.
The files were accessible to MVC officials at all times and at no time did they indicate that the individuals were citizens, IDEMIA said. In June 2024, the elections department had alerted the MVC to 6,600 files that were missing party affiliation, IDEMIA said, but the company had no confirmation that those people were ever registered to vote.
“IDEMIA does not control or manage voter registration, our role is simply to collect self-reported citizenship and interest data,” the statement said. “This leads to further questions: If the Division of Elections had missing information required to register in the state of New Jersey, did the Division of Elections authorize these individuals to be added to the voter rolls?”
Those who were incorrectly registered as voters will be notified by mail and removed from voter rolls, Sherill said Tuesday. She heavily criticized IDEMIA for releasing software with “such a glaring flaw,” MVC for taking more than a year to fix the problem, and former Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration for not being transparent about the incident at the time.
Sherrill acknowledged Tuesday that Trump would likely use the incident to support his claims widespread vulnerabilities in the country’s election security system, although there is little evidence to support this claim. She said Trump “has zero credibility on the issue of election integrity.”
Voting by non-citizens is extremely rare, election officials say, and does happen no evidence that it happened on a scale that could change the outcome of an election.
The incident has sparked further investigation. On Wednesday, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-New Jersey) called for a government-wide audit of IDEMIA’s federal contracts, saying the company manages “an excessive portion of the federal security apparatus.”
“This incident raises serious concerns about the reliability of IDEMIA’s software, the company’s quality control practices, and the federal government’s reliance on a single contractor to manage highly sensitive identity and biometric systems,” Gottheimer wrote in a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and US General Services Administration Administrator Edward C. Forst.
https://www.notus.org/new-jersey/voter-registration-error-idemia
