Democratic lawmakers now admit that New Jersey’s registration of roughly 6,600 noncitizens on its voter rolls was a serious failure. But when pressed on whether the country needs stronger safeguards, like a federal proof-of-citizenship requirement, those same lawmakers retreated to familiar talking points, dismissed concerns about broader fraud, and voted against a bill that would have tightened the rules.
The split-screen response tells you everything about where the Democratic Party actually stands on election integrity: alarmed enough to call the New Jersey debacle “horrible,” but not alarmed enough to do anything about it.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, disclosed that a “serious software error” in the state’s Motor Vehicle System led to the mistaken registration of approximately 6,600 noncitizens. Fewer than 400 of those improperly registered individuals went on to cast ballots. Sherrill ordered an investigation and said the state’s Division of Elections is removing ineligible voters from the rolls, Fox News Digital reported.
Sen. Andy Kim, the New Jersey Democrat, offered the sharpest concession. He told Fox News Digital:
“It was just horrible. There was a big problem with that computer problem that they had. We need to try to address that going forward.”
Kim also said New Jersey “absolutely” needs accountability for what happened. But when the conversation turned to concrete remedies, like matching state voter rolls against federal immigration databases, he pulled back.
“I don’t trust the idea that we’re just going to mesh it with some DHS database. That’s where a lot of the problems come in, but we should all be making sure we’re looking out for election integrity.”
That formulation captures the Democratic playbook perfectly. Declare support for election integrity in the abstract. Then reject every specific tool that might actually deliver it.
Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia struck a similar pose, saying he has “always said that people should have to prove that they are who they say they are before they vote,” while insisting that existing systems work and noncitizen voting “remains extremely rare.” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia pointed to his own state’s voter ID requirements and audits, saying they have “never found there to be a noncitizen voting problem.”
Those assurances ring hollow when a single state just discovered thousands of noncitizens on its rolls, and nearly 400 ballots cast by people who had no legal right to vote.
The New Jersey error did not happen in a vacuum. The Department of Homeland Security conducted a preliminary review and found roughly 250,000 potential noncitizens who may be registered to vote across New Jersey, California, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned that the true number of noncitizen registrations in New Jersey alone could be as high as 35,152.
“Just ONE illegal vote cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen. As [DHS] reported last week, New Jersey could have as many as 35,152 potential non-citizens registered to vote.”
If that figure holds, the 6,600 that Sherrill disclosed would represent less than a fifth of the problem in her own state. And the 250,000 figure across four states suggests the issue extends well beyond one software glitch in one motor-vehicle office.
New Jersey is hardly the only state resisting federal efforts to audit voter rolls. The pattern is consistent: state officials acknowledge a problem exists, then fight to keep federal investigators from measuring how big it actually is.
Governor Sherrill blamed the failure on a software vendor. But the vendor’s account tells a different story. IDEMIA, the company that managed the motor-vehicle registration data, said its records correctly flagged every one of the 6,600 individuals as noncitizens. Spokesperson Lisa Shoemaker told the New York Post:
“All 6,600 individuals indicated Yes to wanting to register to vote and NO to being a US Citizen. This information was recorded correctly and always available.”
Shoemaker added that “at no point was a noncitizen ever marked as a citizen in the database.” If IDEMIA’s account is accurate, the failure did not originate with the vendor’s software. It originated with New Jersey’s Division of Elections, which received data clearly showing these applicants were not citizens, and registered them anyway.
That distinction matters. A software glitch is embarrassing. A state elections office that processes registrations it knows to be ineligible is a systemic breakdown in the verification process itself.
Sherrill, for her part, said she was “appalled by the reckless failures that allowed this to happen and the lack of transparency shown by those in charge at the time,” as the Associated Press reported. She said the state is replacing the vendor and removing all erroneous registrations.
But Sherrill’s cooperation has limits. The Department of Justice requested the names, addresses, nationalities, and registration locations of the noncitizens who cast ballots. Sherrill refused. She told reporters, as National Review reported:
“We are not in the practice of turning this kind of personally identifying data over to the federal government because we have seen them weaponize it.”
The DOJ gave Sherrill five days to comply and entered the request as an exhibit in an ongoing lawsuit seeking access to New Jersey’s voter registration database. The DOJ’s letter stated that “ensuring that U.S. citizen’s votes are not illegally diluted by noncitizen’s votes is of paramount importance.”
Consider the sequence: the governor admits nearly 400 noncitizens voted illegally, orders an investigation, calls the failure “reckless”, then refuses to share the evidence with federal law enforcement. The stated reason is that the federal government might “weaponize” the data. The practical effect is that no one outside Trenton gets to determine whether any election outcomes were affected.
Nineteen House Republicans have now sent a formal letter to Sherrill demanding answers on that precise question. As Breitbart reported, the lawmakers asked whether any affected race was decided by a margin smaller than the number of unlawfully cast ballots in that jurisdiction. Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey said the case proves “exactly why we should require ID to vote in our elections.”
New Jersey’s troubles with voter registration integrity are not new. A Democratic mayoral candidate in the state previously pleaded guilty to forging nearly 1,000 voter registration applications, a case that drew far less national attention than it deserved.
The timing of the Democratic lawmakers’ interviews with Fox News Digital is notable. House Democrats had just voted against a legislative package that combined a congressional stock trading ban with federal voter ID measures. Rep. Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island tried to thread the needle, saying he would support a “simple voter ID bill” on its own.
“If they put up a simple voter ID bill for an up-or-down vote without any of the other bulls*** in it, I would vote for it. I think a lot of people on both sides would, too. But they keep adding other stuff, like gutting mail ballots, and that was the problem with yesterday’s bill.”
Magaziner’s argument is that Republicans poisoned the bill by bundling too many provisions together. Maybe so. But the Democratic track record on standalone voter ID measures is not encouraging. The party has spent years opposing such requirements as discriminatory, only to pivot, now that 6,600 noncitizens showed up on New Jersey’s rolls, to claiming they supported the concept all along.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin praised Sherrill for coming forward in a “transparent manner” and said election software should be “constantly” reviewed. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said state and county officials must ensure “only those who are eligible to vote, vote.” Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York dismissed broader fraud concerns entirely, calling President Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud “a figment of his imagination” and adding, “There’s no evidence for it, and I’m not going to validate his false narratives.”
Torres said that while 6,600 noncitizens sat on New Jersey’s rolls, nearly 400 of them cast ballots, and DHS flagged a quarter-million potential noncitizen registrations across four states. Dismissing the issue as imaginary requires ignoring the numbers the government itself has produced.
The state has since begun purging those 6,600 noncitizens from voter rolls after what amounted to a year-long software failure, a cleanup that happened only after the problem became public.
Christine Hanlon, the New Jersey Republican Party chair, framed the core issue plainly: “The system and verification process must be improved in order to safeguard our elections.” That is not a partisan statement. It is the minimum expectation of any voter who believes their ballot should not be canceled out by someone who has no legal right to cast one.
The federal government has moved to hold illegal immigrants who cast ballots accountable. DHS has ordered ICE to deport illegal immigrants who voted in U.S. elections, a step that underscores how seriously the administration takes the issue.
Several open questions remain. Were any New Jersey races decided by margins smaller than the number of illegal ballots cast in those jurisdictions? Why did the Division of Elections register applicants whose own records showed they were not citizens? And if Sherrill’s investigation is genuine, why is she blocking the DOJ from reviewing the evidence?
Democrats want credit for calling the New Jersey failure “horrible.” They do not want the consequences that follow from taking that word seriously, stronger verification, federal cooperation, and proof-of-citizenship requirements that would prevent the next 6,600 from landing on the rolls.
Calling a problem horrible and then refusing to fix it is not accountability. It is performance.
By signing up, you agree to receive newsletters and promotional content from American Frontline News and selected publications in the American Digest Media Network, operated with Patriot Mom Digest LLC, and you accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.
By signing up, you agree to receive newsletters and promotional content from American Frontline News and selected publications in the American Digest Media Network, operated with Patriot Mom Digest LLC, and you accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.