New Jersey reveals glitch allowed 6,600 noncitizens to register to vote ahead of 2024 election

Roughly 6,600 people who were not citizens were improperly registered to vote over a yearlong span ahead of the 2024 election because of a software error in New Jersey’s motor vehicle system, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill disclosed Tuesday.

The revelation came just days after President Donald Trump’s administration targeted New Jersey as one of four states that the Department of Homeland Security claimed had noncitizens on its voter rolls, along with neighboring Pennsylvania. The White House said the announcement from New Jersey underscored the need for Trump’s proposed national overhaul of elections.

Among the noncitizens, who were wrongly registered between June 2023 and June 2024, fewer than 400 cast a ballot, Sherrill said.

The voters were scattered across the state and registered as Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters, though the office did not provide percentage breakdowns.

Sherrill, a Democrat who took office in January, pointed a finger at her predecessor, noting that the wrongful registrations took place under former Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. She said that she “immediately ordered” her chief counsel to investigate the issue and that the individuals erroneously added to the voter rolls be removed “before the next election,” which will be the November midterms that will determine control of Congress. The individuals have been notified of their planned removal.

“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. 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,” Sherrill said in a statement.

Sherrill, at a news conference Tuesday afternoon, said the investigation would determine which elections the noncitizens’ votes were cast in — and whether they included the 2025 gubernatorial race in New Jersey, which Sherrill won, or the 2024 presidential election, when the state went for Vice President Kamala Harris — but neither contest’s outcome would have been changed by these ballots cast.

The glitch occurred when individuals were applying for driver’s licenses and identification cards in New Jersey. Although they answered “no” when asked on a keypad whether they were a U.S. citizen, “through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway,” Sherrill’s office said.

Trump last Thursday delivered a prime-time address in which he, amid conspiracy theories about his 2020 election loss, claimed the Department of Homeland Security had identified more than 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote across four Democratic-led states — New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, and Nevada — according to a document the White House posted online during Trump’s speech.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin claimed Tuesday on X that more than 35,000 noncitizens could be registered in New Jersey. However, the department has not shared the methodology it used to arrive at that number, and experts have cautioned it could include new citizens who have not been updated in a system meant to check work eligibility.

“Just ONE illegal vote cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen,” Mullin said.

He said he appreciated Sherrill’s announcement, but “this should’ve been done a LONG time ago.”

Pennsylvania election officials have disputed DHS claims of noncitizen registrations, but the timing of the New Jersey disclosure is sure to fuel scrutiny of the four states.

Sherrill said she learned of the error last Wednesday, the day before Trump’s address.

Trump’s administration has been pushing states to hand over unredacted voter rolls and threatening legal consequences for election officials, but New Jersey and Pennsylvania have resisted, saying doing so could put voters’ personal information at risk.

“As the Trump Administration tries to weaponize elections for political gain, I am ensuring we protect our elections. Let me be clear: Donald Trump has zero credibility on the issue of election integrity,” Sherrill said in her statement.

The White House argued that the New Jersey disclosure helped make the case for the SAVE Act, which would require prospective voters to prove their citizenship in order to register to vote.

“Democrats and their media allies have repeatedly said it is impossible for noncitizens to register to vote, let alone cast a ballot. Time and again, they have been proven wrong. As President Trump has said, there is nothing more important than the integrity of our elections,” said Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House.

The legislation has stalled in the Senate, but the New Jersey announcement will likely renew a push for it ahead of the midterms.

“This is why we must confirm citizenship before anyone registers. Only US citizens should vote in our elections,” U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) said on X in response to the Garden State’s news.

The senator has yet to weigh in on Pennsylvania’s inclusion on the White House’s list.

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) called the failure of the registration software “not acceptable.” But he said he trusts Sherrill and the state to solve the problem and criticized “those who will choose to weaponize this issue” as attempting to undermine confidence in elections.

“I have full confidence in New Jersey’s ability to administer voter registration and elections accurately and securely, and to ensure every legal ballot is counted,” Booker said.

U.S. Sen. Andy Kim, a South Jersey Democrat who criticized Trump’s speech last week, declined to comment.

New Jersey Republicans called for a bipartisan investigation and chastised Democrats for dismissing the issue in the past.

“We believe this issue is not isolated to this one-year time frame or a software glitch. The system and verification process must be improved in order to safeguard our elections,” said Christine Giordano Hanlon, chair of the New Jersey GOP. “The public also deserves to know why this was covered up and who was responsible for keeping this critical information from the public.”

U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a South Jersey Republican facing a challenge from Cape May Mayor Zack Mullock this fall, said the state should end automatic registration through the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission and require proof of citizenship to register.

“We have had extremely close elections in New Jersey, and God knows how many other ineligible voters may still be on the rolls or how many ballots have been cast without ever being identified,” Van Drew said in a statement. “It is unacceptable.”

The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, commonly known as the motor voter law, requires states to enable people to register to vote through departments of motor vehicles when they are getting a driver’s license. Twenty-three states, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania, provide automatic voter registration through the DMV, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Micah Rasmussen, the director of the nonpartisan Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University in Mercer County, said the wrongful registrations were a small slice of the state’s 6.6 million voters.

“It’s got to be dealt with,” he said. “The administration is dealing with it, but it’s also something well short of systemic.”

He said that the DMV has long been a weak link in motor vehicle voter registration and that it is worth looking into replacing the vendor that runs the registration software.

“On Election Day, when voters can go and argue and plead their case before a judge because they’re not registered and they thought that they were, invariably, it surprises nobody when DMV winds up being the problem,” he said.

This is not the first time a state’s motor vehicle system has incorrectly registered noncitizens.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt uncovered a similar glitch in 2017 while he was serving as a Philadelphia city commissioner, discovering that a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation error had allowed 168 noncitizens to register to vote in the city, and likely a couple of hundred statewide.

The state’s voter rolls were updated in 2018, and Schmidt has emphasized that noncitizen voting remains incredibly rare.

In a statement, Schmidt said Pennsylvania’s automatic voter registration system, which was implemented in 2023, permits only eligible applicants — American citizens — to register to vote.

“AVR has allowed hundreds of thousands of eligible Pennsylvanians to register to vote while safeguarding the integrity of our voter rolls,” he said in the statement.

Sherrill said that she is exploring options to rectify the problem, and that the vendor behind the error will be replaced. Individuals responsible for the error will be held accountable, she said.

“We’re open to suggestions that make our elections more safe,” she said. “The investigation will have findings on what occurred. We will be looking carefully at what we can do to make sure it doesn’t occur again.”