New Jersey DMV Mistakenly Registered Thousands Of Noncitizens To Vote

The New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles improperly registered about 6,600 noncitizens to vote, and roughly 400 cast ballots between June 2023 and June 2024, officials said Tuesday—an apparent error that will undoubtedly add fuel to election fraud claims from President Donald Trump and his allies.

The noncitizens were registered to vote due to a software error while applying for a driver’s license or ID, Gov. Mikie Sherrill said Tuesday.

The individuals answered “no” when asked on a keypad if they were a U.S. citizen, and, “through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway,” Sherrill, a Democrat, said.

Sherrill said all will be removed from the voter rolls and the vendor who administered the software will be replaced.

The error comes as Trump is pushing for Congress to pass a voter ID law that would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, arguing it’s essential to prevent noncitizens from voting, though it’s unclear if such a law would have prevented the scenario in New Jersey.

The White House promoted the SAVE Act in the wake of the report, noting it would require states to submit voter rolls to the federal government for review and claiming it would have stopped the noncitizens from voting in New Jersey—advocates have said the provision would allow the government to access sensitive information without restrictions on how it can use it.

Multiple Republicans echoed the White House in calling for passage of the bill in response to the news, including Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., former acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

“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 a statement about the error. “For more than ten years, he 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.”

“Strange, I was told with absolute certainty [by] the fake news media that this could not and would not happen,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, though the New Jersey case is an anomaly as investigations into noncitizens voting repeatedly show it’s a rare occurrence.

0.04%. That’s the share of voter verification cases returned as noncitizens, according to a federal verification tool cited by the Bipartisan Policy Center, which also reported that an analysis of cases from the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Cases database found only 77 cases of noncitizens voting between 1999 and 2023.

Trump has repeatedly boycotted key legislation in Congress over the Senate’s inability to pass the SAVE Act. The Senate does not have the necessary support from Democrats to overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold needed to approve the bill. House Republicans are aiming to include elements of the SAVE Act in a must-pass defense spending bill to avoid a right-wing revolt that could prevent it from passing.