New Jersey’s explanation for putting 6,600 self-identified noncitizens on its voter rolls has run into a serious problem.
The software company blamed by Governor Mikie Sherrill says its system did exactly what the state approved it to do.
Even more troubling, the company says New Jersey had the citizenship answer in its database the entire time.
New Jersey 101.5 detailed the widening dispute Saturday after IDEMIA senior vice president Lisa Shoemaker challenged the governor’s description of a “serious software error.”
Shoemaker said all 6,600 applicants gave two answers: “yes” when asked whether they wanted to register to vote and “no” when asked whether they were United States citizens. The company says both answers were recorded correctly.
IDEMIA says the data remained available to the Motor Vehicle Commission and was transmitted to the state Division of Elections. According to the company, no applicant in this group was ever marked as a citizen in the database.
The vendor also says the MVC waited until June 2024 to request a rule automatically marking noncitizens as declining voter registration. That date came one year after the faulty registrations began and raises a larger question about the state-approved process itself.
The vendor’s first public response showed where it believes responsibility belongs:
IDEMIA, the software vendor whose alleged glitch enabled 6,600 noncitizens to register to vote in New Jersey, is out with a CYA statement blaming the state. pic.twitter.com/Em5eHYyi4W
— David Wildstein (@wildstein) July 21, 2026
The new statement changes the heart of the controversy.
A random software malfunction could explain corrupted or missing data. Correctly recorded citizenship data reaching the election system and failing to stop a registration points to a broken rule, a failed review or both.
Sherrill continues to blame IDEMIA and says the company was already being replaced because of broader problems at the MVC.
CBS News New York described the standoff between the governor and the vendor after the Department of Justice demanded records on the registrations and ballots.
IDEMIA says its job was to transmit the information and that the Division of Elections carried the responsibility for confirming voter eligibility. Sherrill responded that the company remained responsible for what she called a yearlong software failure.
The governor has launched a state investigation and ordered the registrations removed. Her administration has also resisted giving the Justice Department the names, addresses and voting information requested by federal officials.
New Jersey says it wants to protect personal information and prevent federal “weaponization” of the records. The Justice Department answers that voting by a noncitizen in a federal election is illegal and wants to know who registered, who voted and where those ballots were cast.
Those competing claims leave the public without the most important facts.
Which state office approved the registration process? Who reviewed the records after the Division of Elections received them?
Why did a “no” answer on citizenship fail to stop the registration?
The dates deepen the problem.
The affected registrations occurred between June 2023 and June 2024 under former Governor Phil Murphy. Sherrill says she learned about them shortly before making the disclosure this month.
That means the failure sat undisclosed through major state and federal elections, including the 2024 presidential election.
The Republican Study Committee says 19 House Republicans have now demanded a full accounting from Sherrill.
The group, led by New Jersey Representative Jeff Van Drew, wants the affected counties and elections identified. It also wants to know whether any race was decided by a margin smaller than the number of ineligible ballots cast in that contest.
The lawmakers asked what testing New Jersey performed before and after deployment, what controls now prevent another failure and whether the governor will support documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration. They also pressed the state to cooperate with the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security.
The requested deadline is August 21. Van Drew called the episode a catastrophic breakdown of the most basic election safeguard: keeping ineligible applicants off the rolls in the first place.
The congressional demand landed with documents from the state itself attached:
🚨Today, I led 18 of my House Republican colleagues in demanding answers from Governor Sherrill.
New Jersey admitted that 6,600 non-citizens were registered to vote and nearly 400 cast ballots.
Our elections are only as strong as the integrity of our voter rolls. pic.twitter.com/364KmuqyI9
— Congressman Jeff Van Drew (@Congressman_JVD) July 24, 2026
The state’s preliminary count says fewer than 400 members of the 6,600-person group cast ballots.
That figure is small compared with New Jersey’s statewide electorate. It is still hundreds above the only acceptable number.
The Associated Press reported that New Jersey has about 6.9 million registered voters and that more than 4 million ballots were cast in the 2024 presidential election.
The erroneous registrations included Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters. State officials say they have found no evidence so far that the ballots changed an election result, while the geographic and contest-level breakdown remains under scrutiny.
New Jersey’s automatic-registration system operates through an agency that also issues licenses and identification cards to noncitizens. The state already possessed a direct citizenship answer from the applicants in this group, making the failed safeguard especially difficult to defend.
The individuals told the government they were not citizens. Whatever their party or immigration status, the state had the fact needed to keep them off a federal-election voter roll and still failed to do so.
The episode arrives as President Trump presses the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act.
The legislation would require documentary proof of citizenship for federal voter registration, strengthen voter-identification rules and require states to remove noncitizens from their rolls.
Opponents argue that the documentation rules could burden eligible citizens, especially people whose current names differ from older records. Supporters now have 6,600 New Jersey examples showing the cost of relying on a box, a database and an honor system without a working stop.
Sherrill inherited this failure, and she deserves credit for disclosing it and ordering corrective action.
She also owes the public an explanation that survives contact with the vendor’s records.
If IDEMIA correctly stored every “no” citizenship answer, New Jersey’s problem reaches well beyond one bad line of code. The state had the warning in plain sight, passed the records forward anyway and allowed nearly 400 ballots to follow.
That is the question New Jersey has yet to answer.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at 100 Percent Fed Up. View the original article here.
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