NJ culls some improper voter registrations, sends others to counties for review

New Jersey has begun culling its voter rolls of noncitizens who were registered to vote after visits to the Motor Vehicle Commission, Gov. Mikie Sherrill said Tuesday.

The governor’s comments, delivered at a celebration of a state-level voting rights law signed earlier in July, come a week after she announced about 6,600 individuals were registered to vote despite marking themselves as noncitizens during visits to motor vehicle agency locations between June 2023 and June 2024. Fewer than 400 of them later cast ballots, according to Sherrill.

“We are moving very, very quickly. We are already removing people from the rolls who are not properly on there as we identified the serious system error, and as far as the investigation, it is moving quickly,” she said at the Union Baptist Church in Trenton.

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In a statement sent later Tuesday, the governor said New Jersey had begun removing more than 4,500 registrations made solely due to what her administration has characterized as a technical glitch in the Motor Vehicle Commission’s systems.

Idemia, the vendor responsible for that system since it was awarded a contract to manage driver’s license printing under Gov. Chris Christie in 2010, has denied responsibility for the registration of noncitizens.

The state is due to transition away from Idemia by Jan. 27, according to procurement documents posted on a state website last week. The firm said it was not awarded the contract when it was rebid.

In her Tuesday statement, Sherrill said the state would refer the roughly 2,100 registrations it is not automatically removing to county election officials to ensure eligible voters are not removed from the rolls.

“We are taking this extra step because our initial review indicates that a number of these individuals may be citizens,” she said. “That has been the case in other states where clerical and administrative voter registration errors have occurred, and we’re determined to get this right.”

It’s possible eligible voters inadvertently marked themselves as noncitizens or that some registered to vote while eligible have since been naturalized.

Two of the Senate’s top Republicans, Sen. Tony Bucco (R-Morris) and Sen. Kristin Corrado (R-Passaic), had called for the governor to share registration information with local election officials. Bucco is the Senate’s minority leader and Corrado is the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“Promptly providing this information will allow local election officials to review the registrations, take any action authorized by law and demonstrate to the public that every reasonable step has been taken to protect the integrity of our elections,” they said in a joint statement Tuesday.

Republicans in New Jersey and nationwide have questioned Sherrill’s claim that a software glitch was responsible for registering thousands of noncitizens to vote. They are calling for an end or at least a pause on automatic voter registration at Motor Vehicle Commission locations.

Sherrill said her administration had sent letters to those who were improperly registered to vote.

Her administration has retained the law firm Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi PC to probe the registration issues. Jeffrey Chiesa, a state attorney general under Christie and a former GOP U.S. senator, is a partner at the firm.

The Trump administration last week demanded Sherrill hand over information about the noncitizens who were added to the voter rolls. She reiterated she would not share the registrants’ information with the federal government.

“I’m not in the habit of turning over private identifying information of the citizens of New Jersey. This federal government is weaponizing the government against individuals that disagree with them,” she said. “They weaponized my private data against me in my election, and so I am working to protect people and their private data here in New Jersey.”

During the campaign, the Trump administration released Sherrill’s full military service record, which included her unredacted Social Security number, in response to a public records request filed by a former GOP congressional candidate. The technician responsible for the release, who retired rather than face termination, told investigators from the National Archives’ Office of the Inspector General he did not know who Sherrill was and did not notice that the request for her information was not filed by Sherrill herself.