TRENTON, NJ – About 6,600 people who were not U.S. citizens were mistakenly added to New Jersey’s voter rolls due to a software glitch at the state Department of Motor Vehicles, but fewer than 400 have actually voted in elections since 2023, Gov. Mikie Sherrill said Tuesday.
The announcement comes as President Donald Trump, a Republican, has made an “aggressive push” ahead of November’s congressional elections to identify and curb non-citizen voting, which experts have long said is not a significant problem in American elections.
Sherrill, a Democrat who took office in January, said she learned last week of the software glitch in New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle System that caused people who said they were not U.S. citizens to be registered as voters anyway between June 2023 and June 2024. “The individuals did nothing wrong and were falsely registered “through no fault of their own,” she said.
The state’s preliminary analysis found that fewer than 400 of those 6,600 – Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated people scattered across the state – actually voted. Sherrill said she has ordered the removal of those who were incorrectly entered on the voter rolls and will replace the vendor responsible for the error that occurred before she took office.
“While the Trump administration seeks to exploit elections for political gain, I am ensuring we protect our elections,” Sherrill said in a statement. “The difference is simple: When we find a problem, “we don’t hide it, we don’t deny it, we don’t invent conspiracies. We investigate it, we fix it, and we tell the public. That’s what accountability and good governance look like, and that’s exactly what my administration is doing.”
Trump has cast doubt on the election results for years and falsely claimed his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden was rigged. He has also made other false claims, including that mail-in voting is rife with fraud, voting machines are untrustworthy and non-citizen voting is widespread.
Numerous courts and recounts found no evidence of large-scale voter fraud in 2020. A Reuters analysis of data found that voting violations by non-citizens were often unintentional and resulted from misinformation from others or confusion on their part.
Last week, the Trump administration threatened state officials with fines and criminal charges if they did not comply with election security measures, including submitting unredacted voter rolls to the federal government.
New Jersey was one of four states asked by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin last week to review their voter rolls. He said there were more than 250,000 potential violations in the four states, which included California, Nevada and Pennsylvania, but did not provide evidence or say what criteria the department used to identify them.
“I look forward to working with you to secure your elections in the future,” Mullin said in a post on X on Tuesday, addressing Sherrill’s announcement.
Courts have blocked Trump administration efforts to obtain unredacted state voter rolls that contain sensitive, personally identifiable information about residents.
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https://www.ksl.com/article/51600406/new-jersey-says-software-error-put-6600-noncitizens-on-voter-rolls
