The fallout from a major voter registration scandal continues to spread in the Garden State, with a big question lingering in many residents' minds: What will it mean for election security in New Jersey?
Gov. Mikie Sherrill recently announced that nearly 6,600 "non-citizens" were improperly registered to vote in New Jersey between 2023 and 2024. The voters were registered as both Democrats and Republicans, and some were unaffiliated with a political party. Fewer than 400 actually cast ballots, and there is no evidence that any election was swayed, the governor's office said.
The problem was blamed on a software error with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission's automatic voter registration system. The state has begun removing thousands of people from its voter rolls.
>> RELATED: NJ Purging Thousands From The Voter Rolls After Registration 'Error'
On a recent segment of News 12 New Jersey's "Ask Governor Sherrill," the former federal prosecutor said she is open to more election security if it comes from state lawmakers. Watch video footage here.
"I don't have a problem with voter ID," Sherrill said.
However, the governor said she opposes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act. The proposed federal law would require voters to provide proof of citizenship at the time of registration – and a photo ID at the time of voting.
The controversial bill has gained the support of President Donald Trump and the White House, which says it should be something that "no American opposes." Sherrill and other critics have argued that it will lead to voter suppression.
The governor defended the overall concept of letting people register to vote at the state MVC.
"I mean, I'm a mom of four kids," Sherrill told News 12. "I don't need more red tape and bureaucracy in my life. Say I move here… I want to go register my vehicle, I want to go get my driver's license – and that's where I would want to register to vote."
When asked if voter registration could be removed from the MVC, the governor was blunt.
"I doubt it will unless anything's turned up that I haven't seen evidence of yet," Sherrill said, adding that it is possible state legislators could pass a law.
"If the legislature wants to change that, they're certainly welcome to put that vote forward," the governor said. "But we can run these systems in an accountable way."
"The problem isn't that you're allowing people to register to vote as they're getting their driver's license," Sherrill added. "The problem here is that this system had a serious system error and that nobody took accountability and fixed it. And that's what we're doing now."
Although Sherrill didn't specifically cite it by name, a proposed state law is currently in the works that would prohibit the Motor Vehicle Commission from prompting non-citizens to register to vote.
The bipartisan bill was introduced in May, Politico reported – two months before news of the state's registration issues was announced.
IT WASN'T AN ERROR, COMPANY SAYS
Sherrill previously said the company that ran the system is being replaced. However, French-based company Idemia has since disputed the governor's claims about a software "error," laying the blame at the feet of the two state agencies involved: the MVC and the Division of Elections.
Idemia told Politico that its systems worked fine – and they were approved by the state. The problem arose when the MVC sent noncitizens' data to the Division of Elections, spokespeople said.
All 6,600 individuals indicated "Yes" to wanting to register to vote and "No" to being a U.S. citizen, Idemia said.
"This information was recorded correctly and always available to the MVC via the database that MVC utilized to gather voter information and transmit to the Division of Elections," a spokesperson said. "At no point was a noncitizen ever marked as a citizen in the database."
The company said the state MVC requested that it change the settings in June 2024. This solved the technical issue going forward – but the problem wasn't publicly disclosed until now.
When asked to comment on the company's rebuttal, Sherrill told News 12 that anyone involved in the situation bears responsibility.
"There's a lot of blame to go around here," she said.
Meanwhile, Assembly Republicans have claimed that Idemia's claims fundamentally change the story when it comes to the evolving voter scandal.
"If that account is accurate, this wasn't a software glitch that nobody could have caught," the NJ Assembly GOP wrote last week. "The data was there. The state had it."
"These are no longer questions about a vendor's software," GOP lawmakers said. "These are questions about what New Jersey state officials knew, when they knew it, and why they said nothing."
Idemia also holds another contract to handle fingerprinting for the New Jersey State Police, and a third contract to provide fingerprinting, background searches and other services for multiple state agencies. In total, taxpayers have paid the company about $61.1 million, the New Jersey Monitor reported.
HERE'S WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR
In July, Sherrill announced that nearly 6,600 "non-citizens" were improperly registered to vote in New Jersey. The faulty registrations happened across the state between June 2023 and June 2024, while former Gov. Phil Murphy was in office.
The voters were registered as both Democrats and Republicans. Some were unaffiliated with a political party.
The problem was blamed on a software error with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission's automatic voter registration system. State officials said that the registrants answered "no" when asked on a keypad if they were a U.S. citizen while applying for driver's licenses or non-driver identification cards.
"Through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway," Sherrill said.
Last week, Sherrill announced that the state Division of Elections has begun the process of removing more than 4,500 voter registrations from the rolls.
Sherrill said the remaining 2,100 registrations will be referred to county election officials for more review – a demand that Republican state lawmakers have been making over the past week.
"We are taking this extra step because our initial review indicates that a number of these individuals may be citizens," she said. "That has been the case in other states where clerical and administrative voter registration errors have occurred, and we're determined to get this right."
Sherrill said it's important to make sure that any lawfully registered voters are not being disenfranchised.
"Just as we have an obligation to remove everyone who is not eligible to vote, we also have a responsibility to protect the voting rights of eligible New Jersey citizens and ensure no one is improperly removed from the rolls," the governor said. "And we are going to do just that."
Sherrill has insisted that she is taking the issue seriously, citing her previous experience as a former federal prosecutor.
"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," she said. "This failure didn't occur under my watch, but accountability starts now."
The Trump administration has been demanding more information from state officials in New Jersey, including identifying details about the people who were improperly registered.
That request has been denied, Sherrill said.
"With no legal basis, you requested that I provide extensive personal information about thousands of New Jersey residents," she wrote in her official reply to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Providing that information would violate multiple federal laws, including the Privacy Act and the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, Sherrill alleged.
"We will continue to ensure that New Jersey's elections remain free, fair and secure," the governor said.
TRUMP WEIGHS IN
The White House released a statement about the error last week, alleging that the faulty registrations are the "direct result of Democrat policies that refuse basic citizenship checks."
"Every illegal ballot dilutes the voice of a lawful American citizen and undermines election integrity," the White House said.
President Donald Trump weighed in separately on Truth Social, pointing to a different Department of Homeland Security figure: "35,152 is the new number just released by Homeland Security of non-citizens registered to vote in New Jersey," he claimed, quoting a number that has since been questioned by several sources.
Sherrill has been among those contesting the federal government's numbers, saying that Trump has "zero credibility" when it comes to election integrity.
"For more than 10 years, [President Trump] has worked to undermine Americans' faith in our elections by spreading lies about legitimate election results, attempting to overturn a free and fair election, encouraging an attack on our Capitol when he couldn't accept the will of the voters, and defunding election security at the federal level," Sherrill alleged.
"The difference is simple: when we find a problem, we don't hide it, deny it, or invent conspiracies," she said. "We investigate it, we fix it, and we tell the public."
It isn't the first time that the Trump administration has criticized the voter registration process in New Jersey.
Last year, former U.S. attorney Alina Habba announced that a new federal task force will be working with law enforcement officers from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to share information in an attempt to "efficiently and effectively remove individuals who are not eligible to vote from state voter lists."
Meanwhile, Republican state lawmakers continue to demand sweeping voter registration changes in New Jersey.
Sen. Anthony Bucco called for New Jersey to immediately suspend its automatic voter registration program until the investigation concludes. He also demanded that the state roll out a voter identification requirement.
"At the very least, New Jersey should immediately suspend its automatic voter registration program until the investigation is complete and state officials publicly announce their findings, corrective actions, and next steps," he said.
HOW COMMON IS VOTER FRAUD IN NJ?
Some pundits have claimed there are very few elections that could have been impacted by New Jersey's registration scandal.
For scale, New Jersey had more than 2.2 million voters turn out for the 2024 presidential election. Out of that total, 400 votes would be about 0.018 percent, CNN reported.
Other pundits say what happened in New Jersey isn't proof that any fraud took place on the parts of the people who were registered.
"It is vital that we remember that those who were improperly registered were not responsible for that error; the software was – they did not misrepresent their status or intentionally register improperly," the New Jersey Institute For Social Justice opined.
"The improperly registered individuals were added to the voter rolls because of a software error and bear no responsibility for this mistake," the League of Women Voters of New Jersey agreed.
The conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation – which has been cited by the White House – lists only 53 cases of confirmed voter fraud in New Jersey dating back to 2003 on their online database.
Nationally, voter fraud is very rare and voter impersonation is "virtually nonexistent," the progressive-leaning Brennan Center for Justice claims.
"Noncitizens are not permitted to vote in state and federal elections," the nonprofit says. "It's a federal crime for noncitizens to register or vote in federal elections, and it's a crime under every state's laws. So it should come as no surprise that every legitimate study ever done on the question shows that voting by noncitizens in state and federal elections is vanishingly rare."
A 2024 report from the Brookings Institution also found that election fraud is "miniscule" in the United States.
"The bottom line—whether it's vote fraud or government fraud—facts matter, and isolated instances of fraud do not constitute a widespread trend," the Brookings Institution said.
VOTING IN NEW JERSEY
There are 2.56 million Democrats, 1.68 million Republicans and 2.36 million unaffiliated voters registered in New Jersey as of July 1, according to state election data.
According to the New Jersey Division of Elections, in addition to being a U.S. citizen, people who want to register to vote in a state or federal election must be:
New Jersey does not require voters to present identification while voting, in most cases. However, if a voter does not provide valid identification at the time of registration, they must show identification at the polling place.
Learn more about voting in New Jersey here.
In the following video, Gov. Mikie Sherrill speaks at a news conference about voter registration on July 21, 2026:
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