Updated on 7/24: In addition to Van Drew, seventeen other House Republicans signed the letter to Sherrill, including Reps. Christopher Smith (R-Manchester), Stephanie Bice (R-Oklahoma), Ben Cline (R-Virginia), Elijah Crane (R-Arizona), Clay Fuller (R-Georgia), Abraham Hamadeh (R-Arizona), Nicholas Langworthy (R-New York), Michael Lawler (R-New York), Nicole Malliotakis (R-New York), Dan Meuser (R-Pennsylvania), Tim Moore (R-North Carolina), August Pfluger (R-Texas), Randy Fine (R-Florida), Pete Stauber (R-Minnesota), Claudia Tenney (R-New York), Tom Tiffany (R-Wisconsin), and Tony Wied (R-Wisconsin).
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) is seeking detailed answers from Gov. Mikie Sherrill about the software failure that improperly placed thousands of non-citizens on New Jersey’s voter rolls, an inquiry that could be a precursor to a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the state’s voter registration controversy and gave her about four weeks to reply.
Van Drew (R-Dennis) chairs the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, giving him the ability to convene hearings, summon witnesses and pursue documents using the committee’s subpoena power.
In a letter to Sherrill obtained by the New Jersey Globe, Van Drew set an August 21 deadline for the administration to answer twelve questions about how the registration failure occurred, why it was not detected sooner, which elections were affected, and whether any state officials or contractors will be held responsible.
The South Jersey congressman also directly challenged the administration’s description of the episode as a software error.
“How do you know this was just a software glitch and not a nefarious act?” Van Drew asked.
The Sherrill administration disclosed this week that approximately 6,600 people who had identified themselves as non-citizens while obtaining driver’s licenses or identification cards were nevertheless registered to vote between June 2023 and June 2024.
The individuals had specifically answered “no” on an agency keypad when asked if they were United States citizens. Despite those answers, their information was transmitted for voter registration.
Fewer than 400 of them ultimately cast ballots, according to a senior Sherrill administration official. It remains unclear which elections they voted in, where those votes were cast, or whether the ballots affected the outcome of any close contests.
“This was not a minor clerical discrepancy,” Van Drew said. “It was a catastrophic breakdown of the most basic safeguard in our election system: ensuring that only eligible American citizens are registered and permitted to vote.”
Van Drew’s letter expands the focus beyond IDEMIA, the French identity and security software company whose system has been linked to the error.
IDEMIA has said its role was limited to transmitting voter registration information collected during Motor Vehicle Commission transactions. The company maintains that the New Jersey Department of State’s Division of Elections was ultimately responsible for reviewing the information and determining whether an applicant was eligible to vote.
If that account is accurate, Van Drew said, the failure was not limited to defective software.
It would mean the state’s own election officials failed to flag thousands of applications from people who had affirmatively stated that they were not citizens.
Van Drew asked Sherrill whether her administration agrees with IDEMIA’s description of the division of responsibility between the vendor and the Division of Elections. If it does, he wants the governor to identify the specific validation or adjudication procedures that failed and explain why the problem went undetected for several years.
“New Jersey’s systems failed at several consecutive stages,” Van Drew stated. “The State registered thousands of individuals who had affirmatively disclosed that they were not citizens, retained them on the voter rolls, provided them with the ability to obtain and cast ballots, and apparently counted hundreds of those ballots before discovering the problem years later.”
The letter asks the administration to provide the exact number of affected registrations and identify every primary, general, municipal, school board, special, or federal election in which any of the affected individuals voted.
Van Drew stopped short of seeking the names of those voters, but wants a breakdown of their countries of citizenship, including whether people from any one country or group of countries represented a disproportionate share of the registrations.
One of his most politically consequential questions is whether any race was decided by fewer votes than the number of improperly registered non-citizens who cast ballots in that jurisdiction. A general election contest for borough council in Oakland and a Democratic council primary in Roselle last year each ended in a tie.
The South Jersey congressman asked the administration to confirm whether all 6,600 registrations have been removed or placed in an ineligible status and to provide the date of each corrective action.
He also wants to know what notice was given to those affected, particularly individuals who may have reasonably believed they were entitled to vote after being registered by the state.
Sherrill has stressed that the non-citizens were registered “through no fault of their own.” She ordered an independent investigation after learning of the problem last week and pledged to make its findings public.
The governor has called the entire episode “unacceptable” and criticized both IDEMIA and the MVC for failing to disclose the error after it was identified and corrected in June 2024. Her administration is moving to replace IDEMIA, although Sherrill said the process of ending the state’s relationship with the company had begun before she learned about the registrations.
Van Drew asked Sherrill to provide a date for the release of the investigative report and to commit to releasing its methodology and supporting data.
He also asked whether New Jersey would cooperate with information requests from Congress, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and other federal authorities investigating non-citizen registration and voting.
That question sets up a potential clash with Sherrill, who said this week that her administration would not provide personally identifying information about the affected individuals to the Trump administration.
“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,” Sherrill said.
Sherrill also questioned the federal government’s ability to protect sensitive personal information, citing previous data breaches.
Van Drew’s inquiry could give congressional Republicans a formal mechanism to press for records that the administration is unwilling to provide voluntarily. A hearing could bring Sherrill administration officials, members of former Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration, MVC executives, Division of Elections personnel and IDEMIA representatives before the Judiciary Committee to testify under oath.
If voluntary cooperation breaks down, the committee could seek documents or testimony through subpoenas.
The controversy erupted five days after President Donald Trump alleged in a prime-time address that as many as 35,152 non-citizens were registered to vote in New Jersey. Trump claimed roughly 250,000 non-citizens were registered across New Jersey, California, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
The 6,600 registrations acknowledged by the Sherrill administration do not substantiate Trump’s larger New Jersey figure, but Van Drew argued that the disclosure validates longstanding Republican warnings about weaknesses in voter registration and voter-roll maintenance systems.
“These concerns have too often been dismissed as exaggerated or unfounded,” he wrote. “New Jersey’s admission demonstrates that these vulnerabilities are real and that even a system supposedly designed to screen out ineligible applicants can fail on a massive scale.”
Van Drew tied the New Jersey failure to Republican-backed federal legislation requiring documentary proof of citizenship when registering for federal elections and government-issued photo identification when voting.
He asked Sherrill whether she supports a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement and, if not, what alternative safeguard she believes would have prevented the error.
The congressman is also seeking a list of administrative, technological, contractual, or legislative changes that will be implemented before the November 2026 election.
His final question asks which state officials or contractors will be held accountable and whether New Jersey will seek reimbursement, damages, contract termination or other remedies from IDEMIA or any other responsible party.
“Simply removing the affected registrations and blaming a software vendor is wholly insufficient,” Van Drew wrote. “New Jersey voters deserve a complete accounting of how this failure occurred, why it remained undetected, which elections were affected, whether additional noncitizens remain registered, and who will be held responsible.”
RELATED ARTICLES
-
January 16, 2023 -
December 15, 2019 -
November 30, 2018