Thousands of non-citizens were registered to vote in New Jersey in what officials are classifying as a “software error.”
Democratic New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill revealed Tuesday that she was made aware of the apparent mistake last week. She claimed that the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission (MVC) registered roughly 6,600 non-citizens who indicated their status while applying for IDs and driver’s licenses between June 2023 and June 2024.
“These individuals answered ‘no’ when asked on a keypad whether they were a U.S. citizen when applying for drivers’ licenses and identification cards, but through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway,” Sherrill wrote in an X post.
Sherrill blamed her predecessor for the purported mistake.
The Garden State’s election office is investigating the voter rolls to remove any non-citizens, Sherrill said during a Tuesday press conference. Officials are also working to replace the vendor responsible for implementing the system that led to the error.
“This happened under the previous administration and, upon learning this information, I immediately ordered my chief counsel to launch an investigation to get to the bottom of what occurred,” Sherrill said.
“I also ordered the removal of any residents from our voter rolls who were erroneously added between June 2023 and June 2024,” she said.
Fewer than 400 of the non-citizens who were placed on the state’s voter rolls actually voted, Sherrill said, citing a “preliminary analysis.”
“I want to underscore how seriously I take this matter. As a military veteran who swore an oath to defend our Constitution, and as a former federal prosecutor, I believe the integrity of our elections is fundamental to our democracy,” Sherrill said.
“I am appalled by the reckless failures that allowed this to happen and the lack of transparency shown by those in charge at the time,” the governor said. “This failure didn’t occur under my watch, but accountability starts now.”
Sherrill also took aim at the Trump administration for attempting “to weaponize elections for political gain.”
“Let me be clear: Donald Trump has zero credibility on the issue of election integrity. For more than ten years, he has worked to undermine Americans’ faith in our elections by spreading lies about legitimate election results, attempting to overturn a free and fair election, encouraging an attack on our Capitol when he couldn’t accept the will of the voters, and defunding election security at the federal level,” the governor said.
“The difference is simple: when we find a problem, we don’t hide it, deny it, or 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,” she said.
I note that New Jersey is one of the states refusing to allow @TheJusticeDept @CivilRights to help them avoid exactly such “errors.”
Stay tuned. https://t.co/bObsAUA2zB
— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) July 21, 2026
The Trump administration has sought to audit New Jersey’s voter rolls to ensure non-citizens aren’t registered to vote. The Justice Department sued New Jersey in February for its “failure to produce their full voter registration lists upon request.”
In response to Sherrill’s latest announcement, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon called out the apparent hypocrisy, adding, “Stay tuned.”
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