NJ To Disclose Records On How Foreign Nationals Registered To Vote

By: Colleen O’Dea, Benjamin J. Hulac (NJ Spotlight)

New Jersey officials say they intend to provide at least some documents this week to U.S. House members who are reviewing how the state’s motor vehicle system enabled some 6,600 noncitizens to register to vote.

That disclosure last month by Gov. Mikie Sherrill prompted fears that foreign nationals were casting ballots and, as the state blocked and started to scrutinize the registrations, concerns that some citizens would be disenfranchised. It also fed into the federal government’s push for strict controls over voting led by President Donald Trump and his Republican allies ahead of the November midterm elections.

Sherrill’s administration says it is cooperating fully.

In a letter to Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd) last week, an attorney representing the state’s chief election officer, Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell, said officials will have “an initial production of responsive records as early as Monday. Sherrill on Friday wrote to Van Drew and 18 Republican colleagues and said the administration will continue to treat the matter “with transparency, integrity, and accountability.” It added that many of their questions are “already matters of public record” or have been answered by staff.

Republicans in Washington have seized on the erroneous registrations as political ammunition, using it to whip support for their party’s elections bill.

“Stories like what happened in New Jersey undermine confidence in our elections,” said Bryan Steil, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin and chairman of the House Administration Committee, which has jurisdiction over elections.

House Republicans are gearing up for oversight hearings when Congress returns from its summer recess.

“We are going to have a hearing when we’re back on this whole thing,” Van Drew said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News before the House left town in July. “We have a lot of questions to ask.”

Registrations rejected

It’s not known which documents New Jersey may turn over this week.

The records request came in an Aug. 3 letter to Caldwell from Van Drew, who chairs the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Committee on the Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) and leaders of the Committee on House Administration. They sought information including federal voting law compliance, steps the state took to identify noncitizen registrants, software details and correspondence with Idemia, the Motor Vehicle Commission technology vendor of four decades.

For a year starting in June 2023, the software, designed to register those who were eligible, validated even those who said they were not citizens. Sherrill announced the issue on July 21, days after she had learned of it and hired CSG Law to investigate. A firm co-chair, Jeff Chiesa, was New Jersey attorney general under Republican Gov. Chris Christie.

Sherrill called the issue a software error. Idemia, headquartered in a Paris suburb, denied fault and said its role was to bundle information submitted by motor vehicle patrons who apply for driving licenses or IDs, then pass the data to the state, which has authority over voter rolls.

Elections officials removed from the rolls the names of 5,100 individuals who were wrongly registered Sherrill’s office said last week.

About 340 noncitizens voted in at least one election, Sherrill said.

County officials are seeking information about 1,450 individuals whose citizenship status is unknown. The software identified noncitizens, while the Statewide Voter Registration System indicated they may be eligible to vote. For instance, many had been registered prior to June 2023 and had a long history of voting. About 220 people in that category have cast ballots, according to Sherrill’s office.

Those unknown-citizenship registrations are deemed rejected, though individuals with proof of citizenship can show it to county election officials to join the rolls. The state Motor Vehicle Commission sent letters to all those believed to have been affected by the registration error. Officials urged New Jerseyans to contact their county’s commissioner of registration before mail-in ballots are sent starting Sept. 19. People with a “rejected” status will not receive ballots.

‘You need to call’

“If you got a letter from the MVC and you are a citizen, don’t pooh-pooh it; you need to call your commissioner of registration because your status has been deleted or rejected,” said Beth Thompson, administrator of the Hunterdon County Board of Elections. “I’m very concerned about the disenfranchisement of people statewide that could occur because of this MVC error. It’s less than a month before ballots go out. Time is of the essence.”

In her statement last week, Sherrill said she was “grateful to everyone who has been working around the clock on remediation efforts and reviewing our records with a fine-toothed comb, to preserve the integrity of our voter rolls, and ensure that our elections remain free and fair.”

New Jersey Republicans are not convinced the registration issue was limited to 2023-2024, and some say it may reach to 2020. Last month the federal government, without providing evidence, said more than 35,000 noncitizens were on New Jersey voter rolls.

Sen. Anthony M. Bucco (R-Morris), the state Senate GOP leader , last week renewed his call for a bipartisan committee with subpoena power to investigate “exactly what happened, how it happened and whether there are other problems we have yet to uncover” as well as “prevent something like this from ever happening again.”

Democratic majority leaders in the Legislature said they will await the results of the law firm’s investigation.