New Jersey Won't Give DOJ Names of 6,600 Noncitizens Who Registered to Vote

New Jersey's Motor Vehicle Commission let 6,600 people register to vote after they told the state, on the record, they were not U.S. citizens. That happened between June 2023 and June 2024, under then-Gov. Phil Murphy, according to Gov. Mikie Sherrill. Roughly 400 of those people cast ballots without apparently knowing they weren't allowed to.

Sherrill disclosed the error and blamed a software failure at the MVC, according to CBS News and the LA Times. She says she's ordered the erroneous registrations removed, launched an internal investigation, and is dropping the vendor, IDEMIA, that ran the system.

IDEMIA isn't accepting the blame quietly. The company says verifying voter eligibility was always the job of the state's Division of Elections, not the vendor supplying IDs, according to CBS News. Sherrill's response: "I think it's well known that the Motor Vehicle Commission has been a mess and IDEMIA is at the heart of that." Two parties, two different stories, and no independent finding yet on who's actually at fault.

The DOJ Wants Names. Sherrill Says No.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon sent Sherrill a letter demanding the names and addresses of the 6,600 registrants and the roughly 400 who voted, giving her five business days to comply, according to Talking Points Memo. Sherrill has made clear she won't hand it over.

"It is not a surprise to me that the federal government, that the Trump administration, wants to weaponize this against people as opposed to focusing on making sure that we're running free and fair elections," Sherrill said, according to CBS News and Talking Points Memo. Her spokesperson, Sean Higgins, told the New York Times she'll "use all the legal tools available to her to protect New Jerseyans' personal information."

The DOJ's position is straightforward. "It is illegal for any noncitizen to vote in a federal election," the department said, according to CBS News. When caught, noncitizen voting can be prosecuted as a felony and can trigger deportation, as the LA Times noted. Dhillon has publicly floated using this case to pursue deportations or criminal charges against the noncitizens involved.

Dhillon has also accused Sherrill of hypocrisy, telling Fox News Digital that Sherrill knew the revelation was coming before criticizing Trump's election rhetoric in a recent speech, and "went on" anyway, per Talking Points Memo.

A Real Federalism Fight, Not Just Theater

Political analyst Peter Woolley, quoted by CBS News, called the DOJ's demand for voter data "unprecedented" federal involvement in state-level elections, arguing states constitutionally control their own voter rolls and rules. States do run their own elections under the Constitution, and courts have repeatedly protected that authority against federal overreach.

But the concern cuts both ways. If 400 noncitizens voted in a state with 6.9 million registered voters and more than 4 million ballots cast in the 2024 presidential race, as the LA Times reported, that's a small fraction of the electorate. It doesn't support the claim, which Trump has made repeatedly, that noncitizen voting decides elections. Sherrill noted the noncitizens registered as Democrats, Republicans and independents alike, undercutting any suggestion this was a one-party phenomenon.

At the same time, a system that allowed 6,600 people who checked "not a citizen" on a state form to still end up on the voter rolls is a real failure worth investigating, regardless of party. Christine Hanlon, chair of the state GOP, put it plainly: "The system and verification process must be improved in order to safeguard our elections... The public also deserves to know why this was covered up and who was responsible for keeping this critical information from the public." Sherrill has not fully explained why this sat undisclosed for months before she announced it.

What's Unproven

No charges have been filed against any of the 400 people who voted. No investigation has been announced into whether Murphy's administration knew about the software error and sat on it. And no court has ruled on whether the DOJ can lawfully compel a state to turn over personally identifying voter data tied to citizenship status.

Trump has cited a separate Homeland Security estimate of 278,000 noncitizens registered nationwide, concentrated mostly in California and Nevada, according to the LA Times. That figure has not been independently verified in these sources and is being used to push the SAVE America Act, which passed the House but has stalled in the Senate amid opposition from some Republicans.

The standoff now heads toward a legal fight. Sherrill hasn't said whether she'll challenge a subpoena in court if DOJ escalates, and DOJ hasn't said what it will do if New Jersey keeps refusing. Whether a federal court will treat this as a legitimate civil rights inquiry or as federal overreach into state election administration remains an open question.