(CNN) — About 6,600 non-citizens were accidentally added to New Jersey’s voter rolls and about 400 cast improper ballots in recent elections, the state’s governor announced Tuesday.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, said this stemmed from a “serious” software glitch at the state Motor Vehicle Commission that began in 2023, which was before she took office. She said that even though these people indicated while applying for a driver’s license that they weren’t citizens, they were registered as voters “through no fault of their own.”
The governor made the surprise disclosure just five days after President Donald Trump’s address to the nation where he claimed there are far more non-citizens on the rolls than previously known.
“As the Trump Administration tries to weaponize elections for political gain, I am ensuring we protect our elections… The difference is simple: when we find a problem, we don’t hide it, deny it, or invent conspiracies. We investigate it, we fix it, and we tell the public,” Sherrill posted to X.
Sherrill’s announcement validates some of Trump’s assertions from his primetime speech and gives him a potent new datapoint in his push for further scrutiny of state voter rolls. It will also surely be touted by his allies who have pushed for more aggressive citizenship checks and other measures to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting in US elections.
“As President Trump has said, there is nothing more important than the integrity of our elections. And this latest incident underscores the absolute necessity of the SAVE America Act,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson in a statement, referring to legislation stalled in Congress that would require proof of citizenship for voter registrations among other new restrictions.
However, Sherrill’s explanation also underscored what election officials have said for years: when non-citizens get onto the voter rolls, it’s usually accidental or unintentional. And illegal voting by non-citizen doesn’t happen on a massive scale, as Trump claims. The 400 improper voters cast ballots in elections where millions of eligible New Jersey voters voted.
These 400 improper voters were registered as Democrats, Republicans and independents, Sherrill said, further rebutting Trump’s past claims about systemic pro-Democrat voter fraud by undocumented immigrants. They were “scattered across the state,” she said.
She said she learned about the improper registrations “last week.”
The-CNN-Wire
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