New Jersey Voter Scandal Reignites Noncitizen Voting Debate

Roughly 6,600 people who identified themselves as noncitizens were improperly added to New Jersey’s voter rolls between June 2023 and June 2024 because of a software error, state officials have confirmed — a disclosure that has reignited a national fight over election integrity just as President Donald Trump warns that noncitizen voting threatens the “very heart of our democracy.”

Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, announced the error on July 21, blaming a “serious software error” in the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission system. Preliminary state analysis found that fewer than 400 of the improperly registered individuals actually cast ballots. Sherrill has ordered all erroneously added registrations removed, is replacing the software vendor, and has launched an investigation, according to The Associated Press.

“I am appalled by the reckless failures that allowed this to happen and the lack of transparency shown by those in charge at the time,” Sherrill said. She also accused the administration of seeking to “weaponize elections for political gain,” while vowing to protect New Jersey’s elections.

The revelation came within days of a July 16 primetime address in which Trump cited declassified intelligence to allege sweeping election vulnerabilities, including widespread noncitizen registration. The next day, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent letters to secretaries of state in California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania, saying preliminary DHS reviews found “there may be as many as” 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote across the four states — 190,832 in California, 35,152 in New Jersey, 15,903 in Nevada and 14,576 in Pennsylvania.

All four states disputed the figures. California’s secretary of state called the allegation “fallacious” and “unsubstantiated.” Nevada officials called it “wildly speculative,” noting that only 138 of the state’s 2.1 million active voters lacked verifiable identification. Pennsylvania’s Republican secretary of state, Al Schmidt, said noncitizen voting is “incredibly rare” and asked DHS for its methodology. New Jersey’s confirmed figure of 6,600 fell far short of the 35,152 DHS claimed. Snopes rated the administration’s claim false, reporting that DHS provided no underlying evidence and that its counts could not be reproduced.

The White House has used the controversy to promote the SAVE America Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote and impose national voter ID requirements. The bill has passed the House but has not received a Senate vote, where even some Republicans oppose it, CBS News reported.

A 25-Year Pattern

For the administration and its allies, the New Jersey incident is evidence of a recurring vulnerability. A Fox News review of state audits, software failures and prosecutions stretching back two decades found noncitizens on voter rolls across the country: Louisiana identified 403 noncitizens this year, 83 of whom had voted; an Iowa audit confirmed 277 noncitizens were registered and 35 voted in 2024; Ohio flagged 597 apparent noncitizen registrations in 2024 and 117 in 2021; Illinois found 574 records transmitted to election officials due to a programming error; and Michigan identified 15 apparent noncitizens who cast ballots in 2024. Earlier cases span Pennsylvania, Texas, Maryland, Colorado, Florida and North Carolina.

“It’s a major vulnerability,” Jason Snead, executive director of the conservative Honest Elections Project, told Fox News. “And we have seen just within the last couple of years many states that have checked their voter rolls and found non-citizens on them … So, this is a big problem.”

Snead also highlighted a legal gap at the center of the dispute. While federal law requires states to maintain accurate voter rolls and makes it a crime for noncitizens to register or vote, “there’s no requirement that a state report how many non-citizens that they have found up to the federal government,” he said. “That’s entirely a state law question.”

MIT election administration expert Charles Stewart III made a similar point, saying the National Voter Registration Act is “silent on the issue of noncitizens on the roll,” leaving the scope of state auditing obligations ambiguous.

Context and Counter-Evidence

Democrats and state election officials have pushed back against the framing of the New Jersey error as evidence of systemic fraud. Sherrill noted that the wrongly registered voters were scattered across the state and registered under various party affiliations or none. Mullin responded on X that “just ONE illegal vote cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen.”

Election researchers counter that noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare and that the database matching methods used by DHS routinely produce false positives. A separate Snopes fact-check on the New Jersey claim found that the 6,600 confirmed registrations were “significantly less than the 35,000 claimed by DHS.” The nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research has documented how initial screenings over-flag citizens: an Iowa audit flagged 2,176 records before investigation narrowed the confirmed total to 277. A 2024 audit of Georgia’s 8.2 million voter records found just 20 noncitizens.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told CBS News that estimates based on commercial databases almost certainly include “a ton of people, maybe even a majority of people, who are absolutely eligible voters,” and that states could break the law by removing them from the rolls.

What’s Next

The dispute is unlikely to be resolved quickly. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has filed lawsuits against 30 states and the District of Columbia seeking full voter registration lists under the National Voter Registration Act, according to Fox News. The SAVE America Act remains pending in the Senate, and DHS has not disclosed the methodology behind its contested figures.

What to watch next: whether the administration produces evidence for its registration counts, how New Jersey’s investigation into the software vendor unfolds, and whether the episode shifts momentum on federal voter identification legislation in an election year.