Overview
- State officials said on Wednesday that roughly 5,100 registrations placed on the rolls in error have been deleted, about 1,450 records were changed to “rejected” and sent to county election officials for review, and roughly 340 of the wrongly registered people cast ballots.
- The state traces the problem to a Motor Vehicle Commission software error that added people who self-identified as noncitizens to the voter database, while the vendor Idemia says it followed written state specifications and disputes fault for the outcome.
- New Jersey has directed counties to review referred cases before early voting and has contracted CSG Law to conduct an independent investigation while the statewide voter system was briefly taken offline to preserve records.
- Federal scrutiny is active: the Justice Department and DHS have sought voter lists, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has publicly offered assistance and cited larger database matches, and DHS separately identified four noncitizens who now face charges for alleged illegal voting.
- The episode has prompted GOP calls for a pause on automatic DMV registration and legislative probes while voting-rights advocates warn against rules that could wrongly remove eligible voters, a debate likely to shape policy and oversight of motor-voter systems ahead of the midterms.