On Tuesday, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill revealed that a software error led to the inadvertent inclusion of 6,600 non-citizens in the state’s voter registration list, with approximately 400 of these individuals having voted improperly in recent years. This revelation has provided Republicans with material to support their ongoing arguments against non-citizen voting.
President Donald Trump and others maintain that this incident serves as evidence of the non-citizen voting issue. They are using this situation to push Congress to enact the stalled “SAVE America Act,” which aims to address non-citizen voting by requiring proof of citizenship from registrants.
However, it is crucial to clarify the implications of the New Jersey incident regarding non-citizen voting.
Let’s analyze the details.
Firstly, this marks one of the most notable admissions concerning non-citizen registration and voting in recent years.
Republican assertions regarding non-citizen registration and voting have frequently depended on misleading and inflated claims and conjecture. Nevertheless, a state—particularly a Democratic-leaning one—has acknowledged that this issue occurred.
Moreover, this situation is substantial in scale, exceeding that of other states in recent times.
In 2024, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state reported 597 potential instances of registered non-citizens, with 138 having cast votes. A U.S. district court identified only 39 non-citizens who registered to vote in Kansas from 1999 to 2013. In 2024, Iowa’s secretary of state highlighted over 2,000 voter records for examination, later determining that 277 non-citizens were registered, and 35 had voted.
Similar to Iowa, reviews of voter records have often revealed high numbers of potentially concerning registrations—figures frequently emphasized by Republicans—where subsequent investigations significantly lowered the reported cases.
The circumstances in New Jersey are troubling, without a doubt. In disclosing the issue, Sherrill—who was elected as a Democratic governor last year—stated that the matter was uncovered and addressed in 2024 under the prior Democratic administration but was never publicly acknowledged.
Sherrill referred to “reckless failures” during former Governor Phil Murphy’s tenure, asserting it was “unacceptable that no one from the previous administration brought this to attention.” (Murphy’s team has not responded.)
If this issue was indeed concealed, New Jersey’s leaders did not take steps to counter claims regarding non-citizen voting. This scenario will likely intensify allegations of a cover-up.
All of this provides Republicans and critics of non-citizen voting with substantial leverage. New Jersey’s situation indicates that this can be an issue on a relatively large scale.
Nonetheless, it is also vital to recognize what this incident does not illustrate.
While the New Jersey case is larger in magnitude, it does not represent a number of votes that would significantly impact nearly any election outcome.
The approximately 400 votes were cast since 2023, meaning they were not concentrated in a single election. Sherrill mentioned that these individuals were “registered as Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters, distributed throughout the state.”
Even if all votes were cast for one party during a single election, there are very few contests that they would have influenced.
In the 2024 presidential election, New Jersey had over 2.2 million voters. Out of this total, 400 votes would represent about 0.018%.
The Pew Research Center determined in 2020 that only two states have had presidential election margins closer than that—Maryland in 1832 (0.010%) and Florida in 2020 (0.009%).
Notably, Florida in 2020 was pivotal, as it determined the presidential outcome. However, it is important to remember that the votes in New Jersey were not all cast during a single election, and they did not necessarily favor one party overwhelmingly.
Ultimately, the broader implication is that New Jersey does not perfectly align with the Republican narrative advocating for stricter voter regulations.
Indeed, it underscores that it is possible for non-citizens to register and even to vote under specific circumstances.
However, it does not support the claims made by Trump and his supporters regarding a coordinated, large-scale effort to manipulate elections in favor of Democrats.
The relatively larger incidence in New Jersey is still considerably less than what the Trump administration has asserted. Utilizing ambiguous methods and unverified statistics, the administration recently estimated that as many as 250,000 non-citizens were registered to vote across four states, including more than 35,000 in New Jersey alone.
Trump has claimed that non-citizen voting is a significant issue and has stated that millions of illegal votes were cast in the elections he lost.
However, what is understood about the New Jersey scenario indicates that these individuals did not intentionally attempt to register or commit voter fraud.
They acknowledged their non-citizen status and were erroneously registered to vote due to the software malfunction.
It is possible that some were provided with information implying they could vote—such as a voter registration card—and subsequently did so, without any intention of committing fraud.
This scenario indicates that the proof-of-citizenship requirement proposed in the “SAVE America Act” would not have resolved the issue, as these individuals were not actively trying to register and therefore would not have been asked for documentation. The Trump administration asserts that other provisions of the legislation could eliminate such improper registrations.
However, Trump’s assertions about widespread vote manipulation involving undocumented immigrants have always been plagued by logical flaws. For such an effort to have a meaningful impact, a large number of undocumented immigrants would need to be enlisted—without detection—risking imprisonment for casting a single vote.
The situation in New Jersey appears to confirm that while non-citizen voting cannot be entirely dismissed, it is not occurring on a widespread scale and seems more accidental than deliberate.
CORRECTION: This article has been updated to clarify that the announcement from New Jersey’s governor was made on Tuesday.
