About 6,600 non-citizens had been by accident added to New Jersey’s voter rolls and about 400 solid 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 regardless that these folks 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 deal with to the nation the place he claimed there are much more non-citizens on the rolls than beforehand identified.
Sherrill’s announcement validates a few of Trump’s assertions and offers him a potent new datapoint in his push for additional scrutiny of state voter rolls. It will even absolutely be touted by his allies who’ve pushed for extra aggressive citizenship checks and different measures to stop undocumented immigrants from voting in US elections.
But Sherrill’s rationalization additionally underscored what election officers have stated for years: when non-citizens get onto the voter rolls, it’s normally unintended or unintentional. And unlawful voting by non-citizen doesn’t occur on a large scale, as Trump claims. The 400 improper voters solid ballots in elections the place tens of millions 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 realized in regards to the improper registrations “last week.”