Sherrill Backs New Jersey Voter ID, Rejects SAVE Act After 6,600 Roll Error

Q: What hidden technical flaw allowed thousands of ineligible individuals to slip into the state voter database undetected?

The flaw appears to have been a broken handoff between the Motor Vehicle Commission’s registration software and the state election system: people who explicitly answered “no” to the citizenship question were still sent through as voter-registration records, and those records were not stopped by a second verification layer. Public statements point to two linked weaknesses. At the MVC end, the system was reportedly configured or coded so that noncitizens were still prompted into the motor-voter workflow and their information was transmitted for registration anyway. At the election end, that data was then accepted into the statewide voter file without catching the mismatch between the person’s noncitizen response and voter eligibility rules. That is why the problem could persist undetected for about a year. The hidden flaw was not just an erroneous prompt on a kiosk or keypad; it was the absence of an effective validation checkpoint after transmission. IDEMIA has said its system merely passed along the data and that the Division of Elections was responsible for adjudicating eligibility, while state officials have blamed the vendor. But both accounts point to the same core failure: the system treated a “not a U.S. citizen” answer as non-blocking, and no downstream safeguard reliably flagged or rejected those registrations before they entered the voter database.

3 articles · Updated · New Jersey Globe | New Jersey Politics · Jul 30

Mikie Sherrill said she would support a New Jersey voter ID law if enacted, while drawing a firm line against the federal SAVE Act.
The governor called the SAVE Act a voter-suppression measure, saying its proof-of-citizenship requirement would funnel New Jerseyans’ personal data into federal systems.
Her comments follow disclosure that a software error at the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission improperly added about 6,600 noncitizens to voter rolls from June 2023 to June 2024; fewer than 400 voted.
Sherrill said vendor IDEMIA was responsible for the glitch, though the company disputes that, and she does not expect voter registration to be removed from the MVC unless lawmakers change the state Motor Voter law.