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Company to probe voter roll mistake

Firm investigation how error happened

By: Katie Sobko
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... New Jersey has already hired a company to investigate how more than 6,000 non-citizens were mistakenly added to the voter rolls several years ago because of a software flaw, but what will that investigation look like and what can residents expect to learn from it?
..... When Governor Mikie Sherrill announced the error July 21, [2026] she said the non-citizens involved had been honest and answered "no" to the citizenship question while applying for their driver's licenses and identification cards with the Motor Vehicle Commission, but they ended up being registered to vote anyway in 2023 and 2024.
..... She said fewer than 400 ended up actually voting.
..... Sherrill said her administration has hired an independent firm called CSG to investigate and that it has already started.
..... This isn't the first time that people needed up registered to vote because of flaws in a motor vehicle system.
..... More than a decade ago, Pennsylvania Republican AL Schmidt, a Philadelphia city commissioner at the time, found that an error in the state Transportation Department's motor voter system had enabled non-citizens to register.
..... The problem has originated in the 1990s, though, and by the time officials fixed in in 2017, the state had to send letters to more than 11,000 people to confirm their eligibility.
..... Ultimately about 227 people were able to cast votes because of the error in Pennsylvania.
..... Much as in New Jersey, the Pennsylvania case involved people who were registered through no fault of there own.
..... "One thing that became very clear through that research and all evidence suggests that non-citizens voting in elections in the United States occurs very rarely," Schmldt told Votebeat Pennsylvania earlier this year. [2026]
..... "It doesn't man that it's not important," he said in April. [2026] "Every vote is precious, and we want to make sure that we do everything we can to safeguard and strengthen election integrity. But there's no evidence to suggest that it happens in any widespread way whatsoever."
..... Changes to the Pennsylvania system made it so that non-citizens were specifically flagged and not able to aces the voter registration pages within the system.
..... A subsequent audit released earlier this year [2026] found that the updated system "works as intended" and found that one non-citizen had been able to apply to vote. That was due to a human error and not a problem with the system.

NJ had used IDEMIA for four decades

..... When New Jersey;s non-citizen registration issue occurred in 2023 and 2024, the state Motor Vehicle Commission was using IDEMIA, an "identity security" company that works with states and the federal government on a range of identification issues including electronic fingerprints and licensing.
..... IDEMIA is responsible for the nation's TSA PreCheck system, and its website notes the work it does in the national security sphere to "enable U.S. federal law enforcement and homeland security missions" and provide support for the Defense, Justice and State departments and the United States Postal Service.
..... The company said in a statement after Sherrill's announcement that it had worked with the Motor Vehicle Commission for more than 40 years and that its role is to "transmit information through the motor vehicle system.
The company said that "voter registration information is transmitted to the New Jersey Department of State, Division of elections, which is ultimately responsible for verifying eligibility to vote."
..... Sherrill said she was "appalled by the reckless failures hat allowed this to happen and the lack of transparency shown by those in charge at the time.
..... "Let me be clear, this entire situation is unacceptable," she said. "It's unacceptable that the vendor released software with such a glaring error. It's unacceptable that the MVC took a year to get this issue fixed, and it's unacceptable that no one in the previous administration brought this to light., demanded accountability or took action when it happen years ago."

'Well short of systemic or widespread'

..... Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said that although the state knows the error was discovered in June 2024 because that's when the faulty registration stopped, "we don't yet know who decided to leave those voters on the rolls, presumably to avoid embarrassing attention on the problem."
..... "In terms of personal responsibility, I would not want to be the official who decided not to purge those bad registrations once they were discovered," he said.
..... "I think there's a possibility or maybe even likelihood of tremendous legal exposure as there should be."
..... There were 6,688,367 resisted voters in New Jersey as of June's [2026] primary election, says the state Division of elections.
..... Rasmussan said this is "well short of systemic or widespread."
..... "Even the Trump administration's larger estimate of 'as many as 35,000 non-citizens would mean that New Jersey's 6.6 million voter registrations are more than 99.5% clean," he said.
..... "We cannot and should not tolerate any level of error, but we also need to understand that errors are inevitable, so we can make sure we have a healthy process in place to identify and fix them quickly when they happen," Rasmussen said.
..... Sherrill's announcement came days after U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin asked election officials in New Jersey and three other states to check voter rolls for people who are not U.S. citizens.
..... The governor said she is doing what she can to preserve the integrity of elections, unlike Trump administration.
..... "Donald Trump has zero credibility on the issue of election integrity,: Sherill said.
..... "fro more than 10 years, he has worked to undermine Americans' faith in our elections by spreading lies about legitimate election results, attempting to overturn a free and fair election, encouraging an attack on our Capitol when he couldn't accept the will of the voters, and defending election security at the federal level," she said.
..... Sherrill said her administration is not in the habit of providing voter information to the federal government and would not be doing so now, to protect the people who were registered through no fault of their own.

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