New Jersey's Democratic governor confirmed that a state software error registered thousands of non-citizens to vote, and the Trump administration is using the admission to press Congress on the Save America Act.
Governor Mikie Sherrill disclosed that approximately 6,600 non-citizens were automatically added to New Jersey's voter rolls between June 2023 and June 2024, the result of a glitch in the state's Motor Vehicle Commission system. Roughly 400 of those improperly registered individuals went on to cast ballots in state and local elections, the New York Post reported.
The mechanism was straightforward and damning. When applicants visited the Motor Vehicle Commission and were asked whether they were U.S. citizens, some pressed "no" on the keypad. The system registered them to vote anyway. For a full year, no one caught it.
Sherrill blamed the previous administration for the failure and said she ordered her chief counsel to investigate as soon as she learned of it. She described the roughly 400 illegal voters as a mix of Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated registrants scattered across the state.
The governor's public position is that the damage was contained. National Review noted her statement that "our preliminary analysis shows fewer than 400 individuals who were newly registered for the first time because of the error voted." She added: "We have no evidence at this time that any elections were swayed."
But the numbers from recent New Jersey elections make that reassurance hard to swallow. In the 2023 Republican primary for General Assembly District 31, the margin between winner and loser was four votes. District 32 was decided by six. District 3, by nine. District 38, by ten.
Local contests were even tighter. A 2024 council race in Berlin Township, Camden County, came down to seven votes, the winners pulled 33 and 32 votes, the losers 25 each. A 2024 Newark Public Schools election turned on a four-vote margin. Even a 2025 Democratic primary in General Assembly District 4 was settled by just nine votes.
Whether any of the roughly 400 non-citizens who voted did so in those specific contests remains unknown. Sherrill did not say, and the state has not released that level of detail. But telling voters "no elections were swayed" while sitting on a list of races decided by single digits is a claim that invites skepticism, not confidence.
The problem extends beyond what Sherrill acknowledged. Federal authorities have flagged a far larger universe of concern. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin posted on social media that DHS data showed New Jersey could have as many as 35,152 potential non-citizens on its voter rolls, more than five times the number Sherrill confirmed.
Mullin also revealed that four states have thousands of non-citizens on their voting rolls, though he did not name the other three. The gap between the governor's 6,600 figure and DHS's 35,152 estimate has not been publicly explained.
The Trump administration moved quickly. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson issued a pointed statement to the New York Post:
"Democrats and their media allies have repeatedly said it is impossible for noncitizens to register to vote, let alone cast a ballot. Time and again, they have been proven wrong."
Jackson tied the disclosure directly to the administration's legislative priority, the Save America Act, which would require proof of citizenship at voter registration and photo identification at the polls. A version has already passed the House but faces a 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
She added that "this latest incident underscores the absolute necessity of the SAVE America Act," calling on "all patriotic Americans" to support the push. The bill also includes provisions to ban most mail voting, prohibit transgender athletes from competing in women's and girls' sports, and restrict certain medical treatments for minors, a broad package that complicates its path through the upper chamber.
The Republican National Committee piled on. RNC spokesperson Ally Triolo, as quoted by Fox News, said: "Every time Democrats say noncitizen voting is a 'non-issue,' voters learn about another case that proves otherwise. It's time to stop making excuses and pass the SAVE America Act."
New Jersey is not the only state where voter roll integrity has drawn federal scrutiny. A federal lawsuit has alleged that hundreds of thousands of inactive registrations still linger on California's rolls, and similar concerns have surfaced in other states.
The governor did not minimize the error in her public remarks. Newsmax reported Sherrill saying she was "appalled by the reckless failures that allowed this to happen, and the lack of transparency shown by those in charge at the time." She emphasized that the non-citizens bore no fault: "Through no fault of their own, the system registered them."
That framing raises its own set of questions. If the non-citizens did nothing wrong, who did? No individual at the Motor Vehicle Commission has been named as responsible. No criminal referrals have been announced. No one has said whether the software error has been fixed or whether the state audited its systems to prevent a repeat.
And if roughly 400 people voted illegally, even unknowingly, what happens to them? Sherrill's statement did not address enforcement. In other jurisdictions, federal authorities have arrested non-citizens charged with illegal voting, but New Jersey has not indicated whether any similar action is planned.
The timing of the disclosure matters. President Trump addressed the nation on election security just five days before Sherrill's admission, specifically citing New Jersey. Mullin followed up by releasing DHS data on non-citizen voter registrations across multiple states. North Carolina officials have separately flagged tens of thousands of deceased names still on their voter rolls, adding to a national picture of registration systems that are not keeping pace with basic accuracy.
Sherrill attributed the problem to the previous administration's watch, but the software error ran from June 2023 through June 2024, a window that spans election cycles and state leadership transitions. Pinning the blame backward does not answer why the current administration's own systems failed to catch 6,600 bad registrations before hundreds of illegal ballots were cast.
Secretary Mullin's social media post drew a hard line. "Just ONE illegal vote cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen," he wrote, before citing the DHS figure of 35,152 potential non-citizens on New Jersey's rolls. He closed with a message aimed directly at Sherrill: "Looking forward to working with you to secure your elections in the future."
The gap between 6,600 and 35,152 is not a rounding error. Sherrill's number covers only the Motor Vehicle Commission software glitch during a specific twelve-month window. The DHS figure appears to draw on a broader dataset, though neither the department nor the governor's office has publicly reconciled the two counts. That discrepancy alone suggests the full scope of non-citizen registration in New Jersey may be far larger than what the governor has acknowledged.
The administration has been building toward this moment on multiple fronts. Trump recently removed Democratic members of the Election Assistance Commission, and a federal appeals court lifted an injunction blocking a USPS mail-in ballot rule, handing the White House another procedural win on election security.
For years, the standard progressive response to concerns about non-citizen voting has been that it does not happen in meaningful numbers. New Jersey just put a number on it, and the number is not zero. It is 400 illegal ballots in a state where elections have been decided by four.
If that does not make the case for requiring proof of citizenship to register, nothing will.
