In the month since the New Jersey voter registration controversy – and following the removal of thousands of noncitizens placed on the voter rolls by an alleged motor vehicles computer glitch that remains under investigation – New Jersey gained 3,033 new voters in August, according to the Division of Elections.
Last year, the state voter rolls added 6,978 new voters in August.
The data offers few – if any –clues as to where the purged noncitizens live or what party they are affiliated with.
New Jersey has 291 more Democrats than it did a month ago, and 566 fewer Republicans – statistics that show the GOP voter registration surge of the last several years has come to a halt. The number of unaffiliated voters, sometimes called independents, went up by 3,166 in August.
The new voter registration numbers show 883,036 more Democrats than Republicans in New Jersey. There are 190,011 more Democrats than unaffiliated voters.
Democrats make up 38.3% of the state’s electorate, while unaffiliated voters are 35.5%; Republicans registration represents 25.1% of the voters in New Jersey.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration removed approximately 5,100 voter registrations last month, after determining they were created solely because of a Motor Vehicle Commission software error and that the individuals had never separately attested to being eligible to vote. Another 1,450 registrations have been marked as rejected, preventing those individuals from voting while county election officials determine whether they are eligible.
In New Jersey’s 7th district – the site of one of the battleground congressional races in the U.S. – there are 332 more Democrats since August 1 and 22 less Republicans; the number of unaffiliateds grew by 574.
Republicans lost ground in every congressional district by the 3rd and 8th districts.
The Natural Law Party, which has been shuttered for the last 22 years, added 23 new voters in August – a signal that other voter registration glitches at the New Jersey MVC remain unrepaired. The Natural Law Party was founded in the 1990s by followers of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the Transcendental Meditation movement.