In New Jersey, noncitizens walked into DMV offices, pressed a button on a keypad explicitly answering "no" to the citizenship question, and got registered to vote anyway. Roughly 6,600 of them, between June 2023 and June 2024. About 400 actually cast ballots.
Governor Mikie Sherrill blamed a "software error." The software company blamed her state. Somebody's lying, and it's probably not the one with a 40-year track record of making keypads work.
Sherrill — who took office after the error window — announced the mess this week, calling it a "serious software error in New Jersey's Motor Vehicle System" that "led to the registration of roughly 6,600 people." She emphasized the glitch happened under her predecessor Phil Murphy's administration, which is a fun maneuver. A Democrat blaming the previous Democrat. That's new.
But here's where the blame game collapses. IDEMIA, the French multinational tech company that built the system, fired back with a statement that reads like a politely worded slap. "IDEMIA's role is to transmit information through the motor vehicle system," the company said, adding that "the voter registration information is transmitted to the New Jersey Department of State, Division of Elections, which is ultimately responsible for verifying eligibility to vote."
Translation: we pass you the data, you verify it. That's your job. You didn't do your job.
So the state's own vendor — a company with a 40-plus-year working relationship with New Jersey's DMV — is publicly saying the verification failure sits with the state. Not with a glitchy keypad. With the human beings in state government whose entire function is to check whether registered voters are, you know, citizens.
Assembly Minority Leader John DiMaio, a Republican from Hackettstown, wasn't buying the deflection either. "This is another example of Democrats failing to secure elections," DiMaio said. Which is about as diplomatically as you can say "we told you so" in Trenton.
The White House went further. Spokeswoman Abigail Jackson pointed out what we've all been watching in real time: "Democrats and their media allies have repeatedly said it is impossible for noncitizens to register to vote." She added that "this latest incident underscores the absolute necessity of the SAVE America Act." The bill would require proof of citizenship for voter registration — a concept Democrats have spent years calling unnecessary because, they assured us, the system already prevents exactly what just happened in New Jersey.
The Republican National Committee landed the cleanest hit. "In the same speech where she admits over 6,000 non-citizens were registered to vote, Democrat Governor Mikie Sherrill says that President Trump's address on election integrity is a 'bizarre conspiracy theory about fraud.'" That's a real thing she said. In the same speech. Out loud.
Six thousand six hundred noncitizens registered. Four hundred ballots cast. And the sitting governor calls election integrity concerns a conspiracy theory while standing at the podium disclosing the exact thing she says doesn't happen.
Sherrill's office declined to elaborate beyond her remarks, saying they would "let Governor Sherrill's remarks yesterday and her disgust at the failure of the outgoing vendor and previous administration speak for itself." The vendor, for its part, has made clear the disgust should be pointed in a different direction.
The registered noncitizens were scattered across New Jersey and affiliated with both parties and unaffiliated — Democrats, Republicans, and independents. This wasn't a targeted operation. It was a systemic failure at the most basic level of election administration: confirming that the person you're registering is eligible to vote. A person pressed "no" on a citizenship screen. The system registered them anyway. And nobody in state government caught it for a year.
The Justice Department is now investigating. The state is ending its partnership with IDEMIA, which is a bold move when the company's own statement makes the state look worse than the software.
For years, the position was simple: noncitizen voting doesn't happen, voter ID is a solution in search of a problem, and anyone who disagrees is pushing a conspiracy theory. New Jersey just handed over 6,600 reasons to retire that argument.
Governor Sherrill called it a software error. The software company called it a state responsibility. The state called it the previous administration's fault. The previous administration hasn't said a word.
Four hundred ballots. Zero accountability. And a keypad that worked exactly the way it was supposed to.
