New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill on Oct. 7 ordered daily checks of voter registrations processed through the state Motor Vehicle Commission after a review found about 1,090 additional registrations that were improperly handled.
Sherrill ordered the review after disclosing in July that a software error had registered about 6,600 people who said they were not U.S. citizens when they applied for driver’s licenses and state IDs between June 2023 and June 2024.
She said fewer than 400 of them voted.
Sherrill, a Democrat, said in a statement that neither of the new problems involved noncitizens.
About 750 of the records came from the same error in a system run by IDEMIA, the agency’s vendor, according to a press release from the governor’s office.
Those people answered “no” when asked whether they were old enough to vote, but their registrations went through anyway, her office said.
Sherrill’s administration said their birth dates showed they were old enough and that many appeared to have pressed the wrong button on the keypad.
Because they answered no, the registrations weren’t legally valid, according to the administration.
About 380 of those people had no other registration and didn’t vote, and their records are being deleted, according to the governor’s office.
About 320 voted and had other potentially valid registrations, and their cases are going to county election officials, the governor’s press release stated.
About 50 were registered only because of the error and voted. Their records are being deleted and also sent to the counties. The other 340 records came from voter sign-ups at agency events for people leaving prison, dating back to 2016, Sherrill’s office added.
The administration said some people at those events wrongly said they were eligible while still serving a sentence for an indictable offense, New Jersey’s equivalent of a felony.
County officials will review those records one by one.
Separately, about 60 people were found to be currently incarcerated, and their names were sent to the counties for routine removal.
Under the new process, the agency will compare registration records each day against what customers actually entered, including citizenship, age, and whether they chose to register.
Records that don’t match will be staff-reviewed before going to election officials.
The agency is also adding a keypad question at re-entry events asking people to confirm they aren’t currently incarcerated for an indictable offense, and offering registration questions in five languages.
Sherrill said she promised a thorough review so that no ineligible person stays on the rolls and every eligible voter is heard.
“In just two and a half months, we conducted this review and are taking sweeping action,” she said.
She criticized President Donald Trump, saying he has complained about the issue for a decade without fixing it.
State Senate Republican Leader Anthony Bucco said in a statement that the updates are “creating more questions than answers.”
He said the public still hasn’t seen the report on the original 6,600 registrations, and that with Election Day less than a month away, voters deserve to see the analysis behind the administration’s conclusions.
Every Senate Republican has signed on to a resolution that would create a special Senate committee to investigate.
Bucco and state Sen. Kristin Corrado also introduced a bill that would end automatic voter registration at the agency, require voter ID, and set biannual independent audits of the voter rolls.
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