The White House on Tuesday said that an announcement from New Jersey’s governor that 6,600 non-citizens were registered to vote in the state due to a “software glitch” is a reason why Congress should pass the SAVE America Act. The voter identification bill has been stalled in the Senate for months.
The breach in the state “is the direct result of Democrat policies that refuse basic citizenship checks—and exactly why Congress must pass the SAVE America Act immediately,” the White House said in a July 21 statement.
The Trump administration added that “every illegal ballot dilutes the voice of a lawful American citizen and undermines election integrity. These incidents are not random errors; they are the predictable result of Democrat policies that refuse to verify citizenship.”
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat who took office this year, said it was the result of a Motor Vehicle Commission system software error. She added that a preliminary analysis showed that fewer than 400 of those who registered that way went on to cast ballots.
“I am appalled by the reckless failures that allowed this to happen and the lack of transparency shown by those in charge at the time,” she said in a statement.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin had said during a July 17 White House news conference that states that do not purge voter rolls in accordance with DHS requests could face a termination of federal funding.
He wrote on X on July 21 in a note to the New Jersey governor that it was his warning this past week that prompted Sherrill to take action against the improper voter registrations.
“Appreciate you responding back to our letter … this should’ve been done a LONG time ago,” Mullin wrote.
“Just ONE illegal vote cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen—New Jersey could have as many as 35,152 potential non-citizens registered to vote.”
In an early Wednesday morning social media post, President Donald Trump wrote that the finding suggests there is a “crooked election system” in New Jersey and called for passage of the SAVE America Act.
“Republicans, get smart and straighten out our Crooked Elections,” he wrote in another post.
Sherrill said that the voter-registration issue occurred “under the previous administration” of Gov. Phil Murphy, “and, upon learning this information, I immediately ordered my chief counsel to launch an investigation to get to the bottom of what occurred.”
“I also ordered the removal of any residents from our voter rolls who were erroneously added between June 2023 and June 2024,” the governor said.
In a speech this past week, Trump revealed findings of an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security, which said it had identified about 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in federal elections across the country. It said most of them were in California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
The SAVE America Act is an election security bill that would mandate proof of U.S. citizenship while registering to vote in federal elections, require photo ID verification to vote, and restrict the use of mail-in ballots.
