The Republican National Committee is threatening to sue New Jersey's secretary of state and six county election boards if they don't hand over records showing how thousands of noncitizens ended up registered to vote.
RNC Chairman Joe Gruters sent formal violation notices under the National Voter Registration Act, the federal law requiring states to maintain accurate voter rolls, to election officials in Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Middlesex, Somerset, and Union counties on Wednesday. The notices give officials until September 15 to produce records on noncitizen removals, citizenship verification efforts, and other voter roll maintenance activities. If they don't comply, Fox News Digital reported, the RNC plans to take them to court.
The legal threat lands on top of a disclosure that has already put New Jersey's election apparatus under a harsh spotlight. Democratic Governor Mikie Sherrill's administration acknowledged that a software error at the state's Motor Vehicle Commission improperly registered approximately 6,600 people to vote between June 2023 and June 2024. Of those, roughly 340 people who were newly registered solely because of the glitch cast ballots. Another 220 who were affected by the error also voted but had prior registrations or separate attestations that may indicate valid eligibility.
Before the governor's office made its public admission, the RNC had already been pulling the thread. Public records requests to Bergen County turned up 134 noncitizens removed from voter rolls between January 2023 and August 2026. Ninety-one of those registrations traced directly back to the Motor Vehicle Commission, the same agency responsible for the software error Sherrill's administration later disclosed.
Gruters framed the RNC's action as a direct response to stonewalling by state and county officials.
"Democrat (Gov.) Mikie Sherrill admitted what the RNC already uncovered through public records requests: Noncitizens are on New Jersey's voter rolls. Now, election officials are refusing to turn over records explaining how it happened."
He followed with a blunter warning.
"Voters deserve answers, and the RNC is putting officials on notice: Comply with the law, hand over the records or face legal action."
The governor's office and the New Jersey Secretary of State's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Sherrill has characterized the federal push for voter roll data as a "phishing expedition here in New Jersey" and has resisted efforts to hand over nonpublic voter information to the Trump administration.
The state's own accounting of the MVC error paints a picture of a system that failed for a full year before anyone caught it. Approximately 5,100 of the affected registrations were removed from voter rolls because those individuals had no separate registration or attestation of eligibility on file. Another 1,450 registrations were changed to a rejected status pending further review by county election officials.
Sherrill directed county officials to resolve remaining cases before the November election. But the investigation into how the MVC error happened, and whether it affected more people than currently known, remains ongoing, according to the governor's office.
That open-ended timeline does not sit well with Republicans who see a pattern of delay and resistance. The New York Post reported that New Jersey GOP Chairwoman Christine Hanlon has publicly disputed the 6,600 figure as an undercount.
"They're indicating it's over 6,000, but I know it's more than that."
Hanlon also pushed back on any suggestion that the scale of the problem is too small to matter. "Elections come down to a small number of votes," she said. "This type of issue cannot be dismissed or pushed aside."
New Jersey's voter roll failures are not an isolated case. The Trump Department of Justice has secured roughly two dozen noncitizen voting arrests, prosecutions, or convictions in recent months, with approximately 90 more cases under investigation across multiple states, Just The News reported. Cases span Florida, Hawaii, North Carolina, Michigan, and Washington, D.C. States that have cooperated with DOJ reviews have already identified between 20,000 and 30,000 noncitizens on their voter rolls, and DOJ officials estimate the nationwide total could reach into the hundreds of thousands once all state reviews are completed.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon put election officials on notice directly.
"It isn't just bad policy to let non-citizens vote in federal elections, it's a crime. And this Department of Justice will intend to prosecute that crime."
Dhillon also acknowledged the scale of the challenge. "We are trying to empty an ocean with a teaspoon because there isn't a culture of U.S. attorneys going after these," she said. All 50 states received notices warning that election officials themselves could face prosecution if they knowingly allow noncitizens to vote.
The DOJ has launched a formal investigation into New Jersey's voter registration failures specifically, giving Governor Sherrill a five-day deadline to respond. That demand came on top of the White House's pointed response to Sherrill's initial disclosure.
The NVRA violation notices are not the only legal action the RNC has taken against New Jersey. The committee, along with the New Jersey Republican Party, filed a separate lawsuit in Mercer County Superior Court challenging a state law that allows noncitizen "never-residents", people who have never lived in New Jersey, to vote in state elections. The suit seeks to remove registered noncitizens from voter rolls and block their ballots from being counted in future elections, the Washington Examiner reported.
Gruters called the law an "unconstitutional scheme." The RNC previously won a similar case in North Carolina, where a judge ruled that never-residents cannot cast ballots, a precedent the committee is now pressing in the Garden State.
The broader Republican push for election integrity legislation includes the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. The discoveries in New Jersey have given that effort fresh ammunition. Sen. Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, told Breitbart the situation reflected poorly on Congress itself: "It's kind of embarrassing from the perspective of Congress, that we can't even pass a SAVE America Act."
Gruters noted that the problem extends well beyond what the state has admitted. "Every county we're finding people that are self-reporting now, and I'm glad we're doing these records request because it's really eye-opening, because this is just the people that have self-reported," he said. Some noncitizens found on the rolls had voting histories stretching back years, one individual removed in 2015 had voted in 2000, 2001, and the 2008 general election.
Many of the noncitizens discovered on the rolls were registered as Democrats but told investigators they did not know they had been registered. That detail raises a separate question about how the Motor Vehicle Commission's systems were handling citizenship attestation during the registration process, a question state officials have yet to answer fully.
The RNC's September 15 deadline gives New Jersey officials roughly six weeks to produce records or face litigation. The committee has already demonstrated it will use public records laws aggressively, the Bergen County data that first exposed the noncitizen removal numbers came through exactly that channel.
Governor Sherrill's resistance to federal oversight has drawn scrutiny from multiple directions. A federal judge has blocked DOJ access to New Jersey voter rolls, and the state government now faces a broader national debate over whether noncitizens should have any role in American elections at any level. Congressional investigators have also turned their attention to the state.
The math alone makes the stakes plain. A software error ran unchecked for twelve months. At least 6,600 people were improperly registered. Hundreds voted. And the state's own investigation into how it happened remains open, with no public timeline for completion.
Sherrill calls it a phishing expedition. The RNC calls it a cover-up in slow motion. The courts have increasingly sided with the principle that election integrity measures deserve enforcement, not evasion.
When officials fight harder to hide the records than to fix the rolls, voters are right to wonder whose elections they're protecting.
