Gov. Mikie Sherrill said Tuesday that a software error at the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission improperly registered roughly 6,600 non-citizens to vote between June 2023 and June 2024, with fewer than 400 of them subsequently casting ballots in elections.
Sherrill, who said she learned of the problem last Wednesday, announced an independent investigation into the failure and promised to make its findings public. The state Division of Elections is working to identify and remove any ineligible voters from the rolls before the November general election.
“This entire situation is unacceptable,” Sherrill said at a Statehouse press conference. “It’s unacceptable that the vendor released software with such a glaring error. It’s unacceptable that the MVC took a year to get this issue fixed, and it’s unacceptable that no one in the previous administration brought this to light, demanded accountability or took action when it happened years ago.”
The affected individuals had indicated, when applying for driver’s licenses or identification cards, that they were not U.S. citizens and were therefore ineligible to vote. But the MVC’s software registered them anyway.
The error was corrected in June 2024, a full year after it began and more than two years before it was publicly disclosed.
Sherrill took office earlier this year, long after the glitch was found out and fixed.
“This failure didn’t occur under my watch, but accountability starts now,” Sherrill said. “The people of New Jersey shouldn’t have to wait a year for a problem to get solved or two years to learn it even happened.”
She said registrations were spread across the state and included Democrats, Republicans and, in the largest number, unaffiliated voters. Officials could not immediately say which elections the non-U.S. citizens participated in, whether any voted in multiple contests, or whether their ballots included the 2024 presidential election.
“They could have occurred in any election since the time they were registered,” Sherrill said.
Several municipalities have had extraordinarily close elections in recent years: a Democratic council primary in Roselle and a general election for the Oakland Borough Council were tied last year; and Democrats won a council seat in Parsippany by 8 votes and in Caldwell by 4 votes in 2023.
Asked whether the votes changed the outcome of any municipal or other close election, Sherrill said there was no indication so far that they had.
“We have no evidence at this time that any elections were swayed,” she said.
Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell, who also serves as secretary of state and New Jersey’s chief election official, said his office was working with county and municipal election officials to prepare for the 2026 general election and ensure that no ineligible voters remained registered.
“We’ve just recently learned some people in the previous administration failed to protect that responsibility,” Caldwell said. “We can’t change that, but it’s on us to understand what went wrong and fix it for the future.”
Caldwell pledged to keep the public informed as the investigation proceeds.
“We will make sure that every eligible voter can cast a ballot — and only eligible voters,” he said. “We will safeguard your votes, and we will maintain your confidence.”
MVC Acting Chair and Chief Administrator Rosalie Johnson identified IDEMIA as the vendor responsible for the faulty software. She said the MVC was transitioning to Thales, which she called a proven vendor with a strong record of protecting the integrity of data and computer systems. The new system is expected to be launched next year, which means the company that installed the bad software will continue through the 2026 election.
Johnson also said the MVC would begin conducting regular reviews of the voter-registration data it sends to the Division of Elections to detect possible errors.
“The failure to be transparent in 2024 is simply unacceptable,” Johnson said. “In my role as administrator, I will be doing everything in my power to ensure that this simply does not happen.”
Johnson said the disclosure was another reminder that the MVC needs to rebuild public trust after years of long lines, bureaucracy and other operational failures.
Sherrill said letters would soon be sent to individuals who might have been improperly registered. She said New Jersey should not prosecute people who were registered through the state government’s own mistake, warning that the error could place their immigration status in jeopardy.
“It would be really the utmost in hypocrisy for the state to charge them when it’s our fault,” she said.
Sherrill said she would not put it past the Trump administration to seek criminal charges and said state officials were considering ways to protect those affected.
“Through no fault of their own, they have been registered to vote,” she said. “It may imperil their immigration status. It may imperil different things. We are working very hard to protect them.”
Asked whether New Jersey would turn over their names to federal officials, Sherrill said the state was not providing the Trump administration with personally identifying information.
“We are not in the practice of releasing personally identifying information to the federal government right now, given that the Trump administration continues to weaponize it against people,” she said.
Sherrill rejected suggestions that the incident demonstrated a need to repeal automatic voter registration or reconsider state laws allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.
“I see no reason why our state cannot run an election system well and have a computer program that can operate well,” she said. “This is just, to me, not a problem with some of our laws. It’s a problem with accountability. It’s a problem with making sure government is effective and running well.”
She said additional safeguards could include presenting MVC voter-registration questions on electronic pin pads in five languages instead of English alone, although officials acknowledged that language confusion did not cause this particular error.
Sherrill said an independent firm had been hired to determine how the software failure occurred, who knew about it and why it was not publicly disclosed. Investigators were instructed to proceed “with all possible haste,” but Sherrill declined to set a completion date.
“I don’t want to sacrifice getting to the bottom of this for any sort of artificial timeline,” she said.
She said a law firm headed by Jeffrey Chiesa, a former Republican attorney general and interim U.S. Senator, will lead the probe.
The governor promised personal accountability if the investigation identifies current employees who knew about the error and failed to act.
“Public service is a privilege, and it is a responsibility,” she said. “When you don’t act in the way you are hired to act, then people can get harmed.”
Asked whether the state would seek financial compensation from IDEMIA, Sherrill said the administration had not yet reached that question.
“Certainly, all options are on the table,” she said.
Sherrill also sought to distinguish the MVC software failure from President Donald Trump’s allegation last week that as many as 35,152 non-citizens are registered to vote in New Jersey. Trump alleged that roughly 250,000 non-citizens were on the voter rolls in New Jersey, California, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
“These two things seem to be unrelated,” Sherrill said.
The governor said New Jersey asked the Department of Homeland Security to provide evidence supporting the 35,152 figures, including the identities of those purportedly registered, but had received no response.
Sherrill accused Trump of using unsupported allegations to undermine public confidence in elections, saying he had “zero credibility” on election integrity.
“I think that Donald Trump has done more to undermine free elections in this country than certainly anyone in my lifetime, including Vladimir Putin,” she said.
Sherrill said her administration would investigate any credible information supplied by federal officials, but argued that Trump’s latest allegations were part of a broader effort to cast doubt on elections.
“Do I think that the latest round that he has put out is in some way an attempt to undermine our elections in this country?” she said. “Yes, I do.”
Sherrill contrasted her administration’s response with what she called Trump’s use of election issues for political gain.
“We don’t deflect, deny or exploit problems for our own gain,” she said. “We find them, and we fix them, because that’s what a good, accountable government should do.”
RELATED ARTICLES
-
-
-
May 3, 2018