TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey’s MVC voter-registration scandal isn’t shrinking, Save Jerseyans.
It’s expanding.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced Wednesday via X that her administration’s review of the Motor Vehicle Commission has uncovered approximately 1,090 additional voter-registration records requiring correction or investigation.
And while Sherrill’s public statement repeatedly emphasized what the latest discovery didn’t find — more noncitizens or underage voters casting ballots — the details are considerably messier.
The first batch involves approximately 750 registrations tied to the same IDEMIA software failure that previously transmitted voter-registration information for MVC customers who answered “no” to the citizenship question.
This time, customers answered “no” to the age-eligibility question and were registered anyway.
Sherrill says their dates of birth confirm they were actually old enough to vote and apparently hit the wrong button.
“No underage person voted as a result of this error,” the governor declared.
Okay.
But that’s not quite the end of the story.
Approximately 50 people whose only registration resulted from the defective process went on to cast ballots, according to the New Jersey Globe. The state considers those registrations invalid and is deleting them while referring the records to county election officials for review.
Another 320 people voted but have separate registrations that may be valid, the Globe reported. Counties now need to sort those out individually.
Another 380 had no other registration and didn’t vote. Their defective registrations are being deleted.
So, no: the Sherrill administration isn’t alleging that 50 underage people voted.
But 50 ballots were cast by people whose registrations existed solely because a system malfunction ignored their answer to an eligibility question.
That’s a fairly important detail.
And it isn’t the only new problem.
Sherrill’s review also uncovered approximately 340 potentially improper registrations connected to MVC prison re-entry events going all the way back to 2016.
According to the Globe, the records involve individuals who attested to their eligibility despite being incarcerated for an indictable offense. State officials have not disclosed how many, if any, subsequently voted.
The review separately identified approximately 60 currently incarcerated individuals whose records are now being forwarded to county officials for voter-roll action. It remains unclear whether those 60 overlap with the 340 re-entry cases.
“The review showed that this issue had gone undetected and unaddressed, with some going as far back as a decade,” Sherrill said. “My Administration found them and moved immediately to fix them.”
Sherrill is placing the blame squarely on predecessor Phil Murphy, describing the failures as problems her administration inherited.
There’s certainly plenty to inherit.
The MVC controversy initially exploded after the state acknowledged that thousands of customers who answered “no” when asked whether they were U.S. citizens were nevertheless transmitted for voter registration during the 2023-2024 IDEMIA glitch.
Now the state says the same defective system also ignored negative answers to another basic eligibility question.
Sherrill has ordered daily automated audits before MVC registration information is transmitted to election officials, new escalation procedures when discrepancies are detected, additional safeguards at prison re-entry events, expanded translation assistance and the replacement of IDEMIA.
Those are reforms aimed at preventing another mess.
But they also raise an unavoidable question:
If the system worked as intended before Sherrill’s review, why are these safeguards necessary now?
For years, New Jerseyans were assured that the state’s voter-registration system was secure.
We now know that one MVC software problem improperly transmitted registration information after customers answered “no” to at least two separate eligibility questions, that additional questionable registrations stretch back as far as a decade, and that officials are still figuring out exactly what happened.
And the investigation isn’t finished.
“Our investigation is ongoing,” Sherrill said. “We will follow the facts wherever they lead.”
Good.
Because at this point, Save Jerseyans, there appear to be plenty more stones worth turning over.
