About 6,600 non-citizens had been by chance added to New Jersey’s voter rolls and about 400 cast improper ballots in current elections, the state’s governor introduced Tuesday.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, stated this stemmed from a “serious” software program glitch on the state Motor Vehicle Commission that started in 2023, which was earlier than she took workplace. She stated that despite the fact that these individuals indicated whereas making use of for a driver’s license that they weren’t residents, they had been registered as voters “through no fault of their own.”
The governor made the shock disclosure simply 5 days after President Donald Trump’s handle to the nation the place he claimed there are way more non-citizens on the rolls than beforehand identified.
“As the Trump Administration tries to weaponize elections for political gain, I am ensuring we protect our elections… 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,” Sherrill posted to X.
Sherrill’s announcement validates a few of Trump’s assertions from his primetime speech and provides him a potent new datapoint in his push for additional scrutiny of state voter rolls. It may also absolutely be touted by his allies who’ve pushed for extra aggressive citizenship checks and different measures to forestall undocumented immigrants from voting in US elections.
“As President Trump has said, there is nothing more important than the integrity of our elections. And this latest incident underscores the absolute necessity of the SAVE America Act,” stated White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson in a press release, referring to laws stalled in Congress that might require proof of citizenship for voter registrations amongst different new restrictions.
However, Sherrill’s clarification additionally underscored what election officers have stated for years: when non-citizens get onto the voter rolls, it’s often unintentional or unintentional. And unlawful voting by non-citizen doesn’t occur on an enormous scale, as Trump claims. The 400 improper voters cast ballots in elections the place thousands and thousands of eligible New Jersey voters voted.
These 400 improper voters had been registered as Democrats, Republicans and independents, Sherrill stated, additional rebutting Trump’s previous claims about systemic pro-Democrat voter fraud by undocumented immigrants. They had been “scattered across the state,” she stated.
“As the Trump Administration tries to weaponize elections for political gain, I am ensuring we protect our elections… 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,” Sherrill posted to X.
She stated she discovered concerning the improper registrations “last week.”