About 400 noncitizens later cast ballots, prompting a state investigation and renewed calls from Republicans for stricter voter identification laws

A serious software error in the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission’s system mistakenly registered about 6,600 noncitizens to vote between June 2023 and June 2024, with roughly 400 of them later casting ballots, 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 chief counsel and the removal of any New Jersey residents who remain on the voter rolls despite their lack of citizenship.

“Let me be clear: This entire situation is unacceptable,” Sherrill said during a Tuesday press conference. “It’s unacceptable that the vendor released software with such a glaring error. It’s unacceptable that the [Motor Vehicle Commission] took a year to get this issue fixed. And it’s 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 noncitizens didn’t intentionally enroll. 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. Still, Rosalie Johnson, the commission’s recently appointed administrator, has already begun the process of replacing the vendor responsible for the faulty system.

Sherrill said the roughly 400 people who voted didn’t live in a specific area or belong to one political party. Some were registered Democrats, some were registered Republicans, and many were unaffiliated voters.

The state doesn’t plan to charge the voters because it was the commission’s mistake that caused the problem, and there is no evidence the votes affected the outcome of an election.

“It would be really the utmost in hypocrisy for the state to charge them when it’s our fault,” Sherrill said. “However, I wouldn’t put it past the federal government, so we’re working very hard on ways in which we can protect people.”

A spokesman later said the state attorney general’s office alerted the governor to the system error.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent New Jersey and three other states a letter regarding potential noncitizens registered to vote, giving the states two weeks to respond to its findings.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin posted on X after Sherrill’s announcement, saying he appreciated her response to the department’s letter.

State and national Republicans quickly seized on the announcement to push controversial voter ID laws, such as the Trump-backed SAVE America Act, which would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register and present a 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 6,600 undocumented immigrants were improperly registered to vote through the MVC, and the system had no backstop to catch it.”

“Voter ID is not a conspiracy theory,” the post continued. “It is exactly the kind of safeguard that catches exactly this kind of failure. Democrats have blocked it every time.”

Matt Rooney, a far-right blogger who runs the website Save Jersey, claimed in a post on X that the state had been “caught red-handed” and demanded the Trump administration’s Department of Justice investigate.

“This was an ‘accident on purpose,’” Rooney wrote. “The entire voter registration system needs to be overhauled. Now.”

Mullin added in his own post that the Garden State “could have as many as 35,152 potential noncitizens registered to vote.”

Sherrill brushed off such statements at her press conference and said the Trump administration hasn’t responded to New Jersey’s request for proof that tens of thousands of people illegally remain on its voter rolls.

“We have asked them for any evidence of this, where they got that number, who it is,” she said. “We’ve received nothing back. … [Trump] knows that if he provides any credible information, we will of course investigate it.”

Other groups took a less harsh tack with the governor, who repeatedly said Tuesday that the problems occurred during former Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration.

“While this mistake should not have happened, we commend New Jersey officials for publicly identifying the issue, correcting the error, sharing specific details about the scope of the problem, and taking steps to remove the affected registrations,” a statement from the League of Women Voters of New Jersey said.

The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice echoed that sentiment, saying it was “encouraged to see that the Sherrill administration is being transparent and proactive about addressing an error that should never have happened.”

“It is vital that we remember that those who were improperly registered were not responsible for that error; the software was,” the group said in a statement. “They did not misrepresent their status or intentionally register improperly.”

The governor said she was open to suggestions that would make elections more secure. But she also took aim at Trump, who she said has “zero credibility on the issue of election integrity.”

“For the past 10 years, he’s cried wolf and peddled bizarre conspiracy theories about fraud with no evidence,” she said. “I saw the consequences of Trump’s lies on January 6. I was in the Capitol when he and his followers tried to steal the election and put the lives of hundreds of members of law enforcement at risk,” she continued. “Trump couldn’t care less about the actual integrity of the process. His only concern is himself.”