New Jersey’s governor just confirmed that the state’s motor-vehicle system registered thousands of people to vote after they explicitly said they were not U.S. citizens.
The first number is roughly 6,600.
The second is the one no official can wave away as a paperwork problem: the state’s preliminary review found that fewer than 400 people from that improperly registered group later cast ballots.
Here is the story that broke Tuesday afternoon:
More than 6,000 non-citizens registered to vote in NJ by 'software error,' Gov. Sherrill admits https://t.co/cagXJ3aT3i pic.twitter.com/jCnplUkqmW
— New York Post (@nypost) July 21, 2026
The disclosure is contained in an official statement from Governor Mikie Sherrill, who said she learned about the error last week. She described it as a serious failure inside the New Jersey Motor Vehicle System.
From June 2023 through June 2024, residents applying for driver’s licenses or identification cards were asked on a keypad whether they were U.S. citizens. Roughly 6,600 selected “no,” but the system registered them to vote anyway.
Sherrill said the registrations occurred nearly three years before she took office and through no fault of the affected residents. She ordered her chief counsel to investigate, directed officials to remove the erroneous registrations and said the Motor Vehicle Commission is replacing the software vendor.
The governor’s preliminary analysis found that fewer than 400 people newly registered through the error voted in later elections. Those registrations were spread around the state and included Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters, according to her statement.
Pause on what that means.
The system asked the controlling eligibility question, received an answer that should have stopped the voter-registration process, and then produced a registration anyway.
This was not a failure to ask. It was a failure to honor the answer.
The state has not accused the 6,600 residents of causing the software error. That matters, both legally and morally.
It also makes the system failure more astonishing, not less.
Registration and voting are separate acts, and the official statement does not establish that every ballot in the preliminary group was illegal. It does not say how many affected registrants, if any, became citizens between the erroneous registration and the election in which they voted.
That unanswered question is exactly why a complete public audit is now necessary.
Sherrill acknowledged the error directly:
Last week I learned that a serious software error in New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle System led to the registration of roughly 6,600 people who indicated that they were not U.S. citizens between June 2023 and June 2024, almost three years prior to my taking office. These individuals…
— Governor Mikie Sherrill (@GovSherrillNJ) July 21, 2026
Sherrill also used the announcement to accuse President Trump and congressional Republicans of politicizing New Jersey’s voter rolls. She said her administration was now delivering the accountability that Washington had demanded.
That argument does not erase the data in her own statement.
The Associated Press independently confirmed the state’s two central figures: roughly 6,600 registrations created by the error and fewer than 400 people from that group who subsequently voted. The wire service also reported that the registrations have now been deactivated.
New Jersey has about 6.9 million registered voters, and more than 4 million ballots were cast in the state in the 2024 presidential election. The 6,600 records equal roughly one-tenth of one percent of statewide registrations, all produced by a failure at a critical eligibility checkpoint.
The software failure occurred while Democrat Phil Murphy was governor, and Sherrill succeeded him in January 2026. Her office says the current administration is pursuing an independent investigation while the Motor Vehicle Commission moves to a new vendor.
Federal officials say their scrutiny helped force the disclosure, while Sherrill says New Jersey had already been addressing the issue. The disagreement now extends to a DHS estimate of as many as 35,152 potential noncitizens on the rolls, a broader federal screening figure that should not be conflated with the state’s confirmed 6,600-person software-error group.
DHS has now put that larger potential number into the public record:
Appreciate you responding back to our letter, @GovSherrillNJ. This should’ve been done a LONG time ago.
Just ONE illegal vote cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen. As @DHSgov reported last week—New Jersey could have as many as 35,152 potential non-citizens registered to vote.… https://t.co/HF17hLlOkj
— Secretary Markwayne Mullin (@SecMullinDHS) July 21, 2026
The distinction between those numbers must be kept straight.
The 6,600 figure describes people New Jersey identified inside one specific software failure. The 35,152 figure is a broader federal estimate of potential noncitizen registrations that still requires individual verification.
Neither side should be allowed to blur those categories for political advantage.
New Jersey now owes voters the full timeline, the software rules that produced the registrations, the vendor’s role and the date each responsible official learned about the problem.
The state should also disclose which elections included ballots from the affected registration pool and how it determined each voter’s citizenship status on Election Day.
Nobody should be pronounced guilty from a database label alone.
But nobody in government gets to hide behind that caution and pretend a system that ignored 6,600 direct citizenship answers was working.
A software error is the beginning of the investigation, not the end of it.
The question was asked. The answer was “no.” The registration still happened.
Now the public deserves every answer that follows.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
What are your thoughts?
