New Jersey Voter Registration Error Sparks Dispute Over Who Is Actually at Fault

The New Jersey voter registration error that placed thousands of noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls has turned into a public disagreement between the governor’s office and the contractor she blames for it.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced Tuesday that 6,600 noncitizens were registered to vote between 2023 and 2024, with roughly 400 of them going on to cast ballots. Her explanation pointed to what she described as a serious software failure: people applying for driver’s licenses and state ID cards at the Motor Vehicle Commission were added to voter rolls even when they indicated on their applications that they were not citizens.

The vendor named in that account is not accepting it.

IDEMIA’s Version of Events

IDEMIA, a France-based company, says its systems worked as designed — and that the design was reviewed and signed off on by the state before going live.

According to Lisa Shoemaker, the company’s senior vice president of global corporate relations, all 6,600 individuals answered yes to registering to vote and no to being U.S. citizens. She said both responses were captured accurately in the database and remained visible to the Motor Vehicle Commission, which used that same database to compile voter information before passing it along to the Division of Elections.

Her key claim: at no point was any noncitizen recorded as a citizen.

By IDEMIA’s account, the breakdown occurred not in the data collection but in the transmission. The MVC forwarded records to the Division of Elections that should never have been sent. That, the company argues, was a state decision, not a vendor malfunction.

The June 2024 Fix

Shoemaker also described a change that came later. In June 2024, the Motor Vehicle Commission asked IDEMIA to adjust its configuration so anyone identifying as a noncitizen would automatically be marked as declining voter registration.

That adjustment stopped the problem from continuing. It did nothing about the people already on the rolls.

The 6,600 records compiled during the prior year were neither removed nor made public until this week — a gap of roughly two years between the fix and the disclosure.

Sherrill Holds Her Position

Speaking at an unrelated press event Thursday, the governor did not soften her assessment. She said New Jersey had already decided to end its relationship with IDEMIA before the registration problem surfaced, and attributed that decision to what she called the company’s incompetence.

She tied the vendor to broader frustrations with the Motor Vehicle Commission, describing it as a mess defined by long waits, bureaucratic obstacles and red tape, with IDEMIA at the center of those problems.

Notably, the contract was already scheduled to expire regardless.

The Story Goes National

What began as a state administrative failure has been absorbed into a much larger political argument. The Trump administration has pointed to New Jersey as confirmation of the voter fraud concerns Republicans have raised for years.

Harmeet Dhillon, assistant U.S. attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, sent a letter Tuesday requesting the identities of the noncitizen voters. Appearing on a podcast hosted by a conservative influencer, she suggested those individuals could face prosecution.

New Jersey does not appear inclined to hand over the names.

A Standoff Over Personal Data

Sherrill has signaled resistance to the federal request without formally refusing it. Her stated reasoning was direct: her administration does not make a practice of turning personally identifying data over to the federal government, because it has watched that information be weaponized.

Attorney General Jennifer Davenport struck a similar note, emphasizing her office’s commitment to protecting New Jersey residents’ personal identifying information wherever possible.

Neither official has drawn an absolute line, leaving the question of compliance unresolved.

Questions Nobody Has Answered Yet

Several gaps remain in the public record:

• Why the error went unaddressed for two years after being identified
• Why the affected registrations were never removed from the rolls
• Who within state government authorized the transmission of noncitizen data to elections officials
• Whether anyone flagged the problem internally before this week

Sherrill said Thursday she does not know why the two-year delay occurred. She added that she has not spoken with former Gov. Phil Murphy, who held office during the period when the registrations happened.

Two Competing Paths Forward

The governor has ordered an independent investigation. Legislative Democrats have indicated they would prefer to wait for its findings before pursuing their own inquiry, though no timeline has been established for how or when the review will unfold.

Democratic state Sen. Joe Cryan framed the legislature’s role narrowly, saying the obligation is to receive the report and respond to it.

Republicans want something considerably more aggressive. Pointing to the contradictions between Sherrill’s account and IDEMIA’s, they are pushing for a legislative committee armed with subpoena power.

GOP Assemblymember Dawn Fantasia laid out the demand at a Thursday press conference: subpoenas, sworn testimony, public hearings, and a final report produced through an independent bipartisan process rather than filtered through the governor’s office or either party.

Why the Dispute Matters

Strip away the politics and a technical question sits underneath: was this a software defect or a process failure?

The distinction carries real consequences. If IDEMIA’s system malfunctioned, liability points toward the vendor and the state’s oversight of it. If the system captured everything correctly and state agencies simply routed the wrong records to the wrong place, the failure is internal — and a new contractor changes nothing.

That is precisely why Republicans want testimony under oath, and it explains why the independent review’s methodology may matter as much as its conclusions.

For now, two parties with obvious incentives are telling incompatible stories, and the documentary record that could settle it has not been made public.