By Krystal Knapp July 26, 2026
About 400 later cast ballots. Here is what we know about the voter-registration failure, what the state and its contractor disagree about, and the questions that still need to be answered.
Governor Mikie Sherrill, Lt. Governor Dale Caldwell and MVC Acting Chair & Chief Administrator Rosalie Johnson hold a press conference announcing that New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle System led to voter registration of roughly 6,600 people, who indicated that they were not U.S. citizens, between June 2023 and June 2024, while in the media room of the statehouse in Trenton, N.J. on Tuesday, July 21, 2026. Photo: Tim Larsen, Office of the Governor.
New Jersey officials have acknowledged a breakdown in the state’s voter-registration system: About 6,600 people who identified themselves as noncitizens while obtaining driver’s licenses or identification cards were nevertheless registered to vote.
Roughly 400 of them later cast ballots, according to a preliminary state review.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill has blamed a software error involving IDEMIA, a longtime Motor Vehicle Commission contractor. But the company says its system accurately recorded the information it received and that state officials had access to records showing the applicants were not citizens.
The failure occurred between June 2023 and June 2024, during former Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration. Although the process was corrected in June 2024, the public was not told about it until Sherrill disclosed it on July 21, 2026.
That leaves several major questions unresolved: Was this primarily a software failure, a poorly designed state process, a failure by election officials to review the information they received, or some combination of all three? Who knew about the problem, and when? And why weren’t the approximately 6,600 registrations reviewed and removed after the system was fixed?
Here is what we know and what we don’t know yet.
New Jersey officials have acknowledged a breakdown in the state’s voter-registration system: About 6,600 people who identified themselves as noncitizens while obtaining driver’s licenses or identification cards were nevertheless registered to vote.
Roughly 400 of them later cast ballots, according to a preliminary state review.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill has blamed a software error involving IDEMIA, a longtime Motor Vehicle Commission contractor. But the company says its system accurately recorded the information it received and that state officials had access to records showing the applicants were not citizens.
The failure occurred between June 2023 and June 2024, during former Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration. Although the process was corrected in June 2024, the public was not told about it until Sherrill disclosed it on July 21, 2026.
That leaves several major questions unresolved: Was this primarily a software failure, a poorly designed state process, a failure by election officials to review the information they received, or some combination of all three? Who knew about the problem, and when? And why weren’t the approximately 6,600 registrations reviewed and removed after the system was fixed?
Here is what we know and what we don’t know yet.
First, who is allowed to vote in New Jersey?
To register to vote in New Jersey, a person must be a U.S. citizen, a resident of the county where they are registering for at least 30 days before the election, and at least 17 years old, although they cannot vote until they turn 18.
Noncitizens are prohibited from voting in federal and New Jersey elections. That includes people who are in the country legally, such as permanent residents with green cards, as well as people who are undocumented.
Noncitizens can legally obtain New Jersey driver’s licenses. Having a driver’s license does not make someone eligible to vote.
What happened?
Between June 2023 and June 2024, approximately 6,600 people were registered to vote through the Motor Vehicle Commission even though they indicated that they were not U.S. citizens.
The registrations occurred when people applied for or renewed driver’s licenses or state identification cards.
The applicants answered “no” when asked whether they were U.S. citizens, according to both the state and IDEMIA. But the system still asked whether they wanted to register to vote. IDEMIA says they answered “yes,” and their information was then transmitted for voter registration.
The state says the problem was corrected in June 2024. But officials apparently did not then identify and remove everyone who had already been improperly registered, and the public was not told about the failure until Sherrill disclosed it more than two years later.
Did the 6,600 people intentionally register?
That is disputed or, at a minimum, more complicated than the state initially disclosed.
