GOP lawmaker proposes five NJ election security bills

The proposals would change identification, auditing and mail-in voting requirements in New Jersey.

Two months after Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced that a Motor Vehicle Commission system failure had improperly registered roughly 6,600 people to vote, a Republican lawmaker has proposed a package of election security bills he says will ensure that only eligible voters cast ballots in future elections.

Assemblyman Alex Sauickie, a Republican from the state’s 12th Legislative District, said Monday that one bill would require voters to show a photo ID at the polls, while another would require the commissioner of registration in each county to perform twice-yearly audits of the voter rolls.

A third bill would require recorded or livestreamed video surveillance of mail-in ballot drop boxes and mail-in ballot counters, a fourth bill would make voters fill out a cure form that would serve as an affidavit if their ballot has a signature discrepancy, and a fifth bill would require mail-in ballots to be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day to count.

Sauickie, who lives in Jackson and represents parts of Burlington, Middlesex, Monmouth and Ocean counties, framed the package as a series of common-sense measures that would help combat the kind of improper voting that followed the mistaken registrations.

“There’s been discussion about the potential for voter fraud for a decade, and it was always, ‘Oh, it doesn’t exist, there’s no proof.’ Well now there is,” Sauickie told The Jersey Vindicator on Monday. “It became very apparent, very quickly, that we need to tighten things up and ensure that we don’t see a repeat of that going forward.”

The bills, which will be formally introduced in the General Assembly today, follow Sherrill’s July disclosure that a Motor Vehicle Commission system failure improperly registered roughly 6,600 non-citizens to vote between June 2023 and June 2024.

The affected applicants had indicated when they registered for or renewed their driver’s licenses or identification cards that they were not U.S. citizens. But the MVC system allowed them to continue to the voter-registration question, where they answered “yes” when asked whether they wanted to register.

The process was corrected in June 2024, but the registrations were not reviewed or removed at the time. It remains unclear why nothing was done or who was responsible.

Sherrill announced Aug. 19 that the state had removed about 5,100 of the affected people from the voter rolls and blocked another 1,450 from voting pending a review of their eligibility.

The roughly 5,100 people removed from the rolls had been registered because of the MVC error and did not have a separate registration or other record attesting to their eligibility, according to Sherrill. The other approximately 1,450 had separate voter registrations, attestations, or transactions requiring further review.

About 340 people who were newly registered because of the error later voted. Another roughly 220 people who voted had previous voter registrations or other records indicating they may have been eligible to register, Sherrill said. Their cases are being referred to county election officials for further review.

The MVC’s longtime technology contractor, IDEMIA, has maintained that its system accurately recorded applicants’ answers and that state election officials were responsible for reviewing and approving voter registrations. Sherrill has blamed the company for the software error that allowed the registrations to be transmitted.

Sauickie said his bill requiring twice-yearly audits would have revealed such an issue fairly quickly. The other bills would have helped prevent the mistake in the first place, he added.

The bill requiring a photo ID at the ballot box is likely to draw the most opposition, however.

If passed, it would require in-person voters to show a New Jersey driver’s license, New Jersey non-driver identification card or other state or federal government document that includes their name and picture.

It would go into effect Jan. 1, 2027, and make New Jersey one of about two dozen states that require photo IDs at the polls.

Sauickie framed the measure as a way for poll workers to identify the person standing in front of them.

“We have to show identification to get on a plane, to get into public buildings, to get into schools,” he said. “This seems very common sense … I don’t think it’s a crazy idea that’s trampling on anybody’s constitutional rights. If anything, it’s supporting the Constitution and making sure we get our votes correct.”

Liza Weisberg, a supervising attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, disagreed.

“Voter ID laws, especially photo ID laws, create unnecessary barriers to the ballot box that drive turnout down and do so unevenly — they’re especially burdensome for low-income folks, voters of color, and younger voters,” she said.

In a 2021 fact sheet, the American Civil Liberties Union cited a 2014 study by the Government Accountability Office that found strict photo ID laws cut turnout by two to three percentage points.

About 13% of Black people in the United States lack a government-issued photo ID, compared with 5% of white people, the sheet added.

Weisberg said the state already has appropriate identification requirements and further restrictions are unnecessary.

“They are efforts to make voting harder, which leads to disenfranchisement in predictable patterns,” she said. “Lawmakers should focus on making voting more accessible, not harder.”

Weisberg added that the motor vehicle glitch confirmed what voting rights activists have known for decades: Problems with the voter rolls are usually due to administrative or technological errors, not the voters themselves.

In the fact sheet, the organization cited another study that found just 31 credible allegations of voter impersonation between 2000 and 2012, even though more than 1 billion votes were cast during that time.

That makes photo ID a “solution in search of a problem,” the ACLU report concluded.

“I think there’s an obvious effort to weaponize this unfortunate glitch,” Weisberg said. “But that effort is transparently aimed at disenfranchising voters, not making our elections fairer.”

Sauickie maintains that most citizens support voter ID laws and pointed to recent polling from Pew Research Center and Gallup that showed four out of five American voters agree with the measures.

His bill would also allow some people to apply for free, state-issued, non-driver identification cards if, for instance, they receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. That would remove the cost barrier, he said.

“I’m supportive of the constitutional right, which is why we came up with the idea to do this for free,” Sauickie said. “It’s an important thing, getting to vote. And we’re making sure the right residents are voting.”