Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D., N.J.) recently admitted that her state has thousands of noncitizens on its voter rolls — and that several hundred even voted. While Sherrill was quick to lay the blame at the feet of her predecessor, Gov. Phil Murphy (D., N.J.), Republicans in Congress want her to answer for the failures.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R., N.J.), Sherrill’s fellow New Jerseyan, led a letter alongside 18 of his colleagues to Sherrill, asking for answers about New Jersey’s “alarming announcement that a failure within the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission’s voter-registration system improperly added approximately 6,600 noncitizens to the State’s voter rolls and enabled roughly 400 of those individuals to cast ballots in elections.” The effort was obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter.
“According to information released by your administration, these individuals expressly answered ‘no’ when asked whether they were United States citizens while applying for driver’s licenses or identification cards,” the GOP lawmakers wrote. “Despite those answers, a software failure reportedly transmitted their information for voter registration between June 2023 and June 2024. This was not a minor clerical discrepancy. It was a catastrophic breakdown of the most basic safeguard in our election system: ensuring that only eligible American citizens are registered and permitted to vote. How do you know this was just a software glitch and not a nefarious act?”
Van Drew and his colleagues, Reps. Chris Smith (R., N.J), Randy Fine (R., Fla.), Nicole Malliotakis (R., N.Y.), Tony Wied (R., Wis.), Mike Lawler (R., N.Y.), Abe Hamadeh (R., Ariz.), Pete Stauber (R., Minn.), Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.), Nick Langworthy (R., N.Y.), Ben Cline (R., Va.), Eli Crane (R., Ariz.), Clay Fuller (R., Ga.), Max Miller (R., Ohio), August Pfluger (R., Texas), Dan Meuser (R., Pa.), Tom Tiffany (R., Wis.), Stephanie Bice (R., Okla.), and Tim Moore (R., N.C.), want Sherrill to respond by August 21 to a series of their questions.
They want to know if any race was decided by a margin smaller than the number of illegal ballots, whether the state will support proof of citizenship for voter registration, and whether they’ll comply with the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security for an investigation. The deadline for a response is August 21st.
“Does your administration support requiring documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration? If not, please explain what alternative safeguard would have prevented the failure disclosed by your administration,” they wrote. Another question is “what specific administrative, technological, contractual, or legislative changes will be implemented before the 2026 general election to ensure that no additional ineligible individuals are registered or permitted to vote?”
For his part, Van Drew added that what happened in New Jersey “was not a minor clerical discrepancy. It was a catastrophic breakdown of the most basic safeguard in our election system: ensuring that only eligible American citizens are registered and permitted to vote.”
“New Jersey’s systems failed at several consecutive stages,” Van Drew added. “The State registered thousands of individuals who had affirmatively disclosed that they were not citizens, retained them on the voter rolls, provided them with the ability to obtain and cast ballots, and apparently counted hundreds of those ballots before discovering the problem years later.”
Pfluger, the Chair of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), and one of Van Drew’s co-signers, added to the Reporter that “Republicans have been warning about vulnerabilities in our election systems for years, and now we have definitive proof that noncitizens can end up casting ballots in American elections.”
“Governor Sherrill owes the people of New Jersey a straight answer on whether this failure swung any elections and whether she will finally support requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration,” Pfluger added. “Democrats cannot keep treating election integrity as negotiable when it is the last line of defense for our republic. We look forward to Governor Sherrill’s prompt response.”
The Republicans tied New Jersey’s failures to their broader legislative efforts as well. “House Republicans have acted to address these vulnerabilities by passing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE America Act,” they noted to Sherrill. The legislation would require documentary proof of United States citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections and government-issued photo identification when casting a federal ballot.”
