The U.S. Department of Justice says New Jersey’s disclosure that approximately 6,600 noncitizens were improperly registered to vote — including roughly 400 who cast ballots — provides a new and substantial basis for demanding the state’s complete, unredacted voter registration list.
In a letter filed today, Christopher Gardner, a trial lawyer in the Voting Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, argued that the disclosure supports a federal investigation into whether New Jersey complied with laws requiring the maintenance of accurate voter rolls and limiting registration to eligible citizens.
“The state cannot simultaneously admit that hundreds of federal crimes have been committed by noncitizen voters who appeared on New Jersey’s voter rolls and deny that the Attorney General has a basis to investigate proper maintenance of those rolls under the Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act,” Gardner wrote.
The letter was filed in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell, who as Secretary of State is New Jersey’s chief election official. The federal government is seeking to compel Caldwell to turn over an electronic copy of the Statewide Voter Registration List, which contains personal information that New Jersey has refused to release, citing state and federal privacy protections.
The dispute took on new urgency after Gov. Mikie Sherrill disclosed that a Motor Vehicle Commission vendor’s software improperly transmitted approximately 6,600 people for voter registration between June 2023 and June 2024.
The affected individuals indicated on an electronic keypad that they were not U.S. citizens and did not attest to their eligibility to vote. But the vendor’s software transmitted their information for voter registration processing anyway. The state has said the registrations occurred through no fault of the affected individuals and has begun removing those deemed ineligible.
The Justice Department said Sherrill’s disclosure provides “an additional uncontroverted basis” for its demand under the Civil Rights Act of 1960.
New Jersey rejected that argument in a response filed Monday.
Robert Wiygul, a Philadelphia attorney representing Caldwell, said the Justice Department cannot retroactively repair its original demand by relying on facts that emerged nearly a year later.
“DOJ ‘cannot retrospectively supplement’ its August 14, 2025, CRA demand with subsequent correspondence or court filings,” Wiygul wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi.
Wiygul said the new information has no bearing on New Jersey’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit or the Justice Department’s motion to compel production of the voter list. He argued that the department’s original demand “failed to state any basis whatsoever” and remains legally deficient for several independent reasons.
According to Wiygul, a statewide voter registration list is not a record covered by the Civil Rights Act; the department failed to identify a proper investigative purpose; and federal law does not entitle it to personally identifiable information belonging to millions of New Jersey voters.
Wiygul also argued that disclosure would conflict with federal privacy protections, including the Privacy Act, the E-Government Act and the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act.
“It is unsurprising that seventeen federal district courts and the Sixth Circuit have unanimously dismissed — or affirmed dismissal of — DOJ’s parallel VRL lawsuits against other States,” Wiygul stated. “DOJ’s Notice therefore fails to rehabilitate its fatally defective CRA claim or provide any reason to depart from this growing wall of precedent.”
Gardner disputed the state’s contention that the Justice Department is attempting to retroactively supplement its request. He said the demand was made through a series of letters, including one dated July 15, 2025, that sought New Jersey’s unredacted voter list for enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act and identified alleged deficiencies in the state’s responses to a federal election administration survey.
“If the SVRL had been supplied, we now know that it would have demonstrated the presence of thousands of noncitizen voters,” Gardner wrote.
He said the factual basis included in the earlier letter was sufficient to support the demand, but argued that it was appropriate to notify the state and the court about the newly disclosed registration error while litigation remains pending.
“In effect, the demand is augmented based on the new facts, and if the custodian of records continues to oppose the demand, then the new facts become relevant in the proceedings to enforce the demand,” Gardner wrote.
Requiring the department to issue another demand and file a separate enforcement action “would serve no purpose,” he said.
New Jersey has asked Quraishi to dismiss the lawsuit and deny the Justice Department’s motion to compel. The department maintains that the state’s objections lack merit and that the newly disclosed registrations bolster its case for obtaining the unredacted voter data.
In a separate letter today, Sherrill told the Assistant Attorney General who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, that the state had rejected the request.