WASHINGTON, D.C. — The controversy surrounding New Jersey’s registration of thousands of self-identified noncitizens is officially drawing more scrutiny from Capitol Hill.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil (R-WI), Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), and Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) sent a letter Tuesday to IDEMIA CEO Matt Cole demanding information about the company’s role in the voter registration system that produced approximately 6,600 questionable registrations.
The congressional inquiry could help answer one of the biggest unresolved questions in the growing scandal: Was this really a software glitch, or did New Jersey officials have the information necessary to prevent the registrations all along?
Gov. Mikie Sherrill has blamed what she characterized as a “serious software error” in the Motor Vehicle Commission system. According to the governor, individuals told the MVC they were not U.S. citizens and therefore ineligible to vote, yet were nevertheless registered.
Approximately 400 of the 6,600 individuals reportedly went on to cast ballots.
IDEMIA, however, has publicly disputed the administration’s explanation.
According to the company, all 6,600 individuals answered “Yes” when asked whether they wanted to register to vote while simultaneously answering “No” to the citizenship question. IDEMIA maintains that both answers were correctly recorded and available to the MVC before voter information was transmitted to the Division of Elections.
That distinction is potentially significant.
If IDEMIA’s account is accurate, the problem wasn’t simply that software mistakenly transformed noncitizens into registered voters. State officials apparently possessed data identifying those individuals as noncitizens while their information nevertheless proceeded through New Jersey’s registration process.
The registrations apparently stopped after the MVC asked IDEMIA to modify certain settings in June 2024. Yet the affected registrations remained on the rolls, and the public did not learn about the problem until July 2026.
That two-year gap is increasingly becoming as important as the original registration failure itself.
The House committees are now requesting records concerning the alleged software problem, the information available to New Jersey officials, and IDEMIA’s communications with state authorities.
The inquiry also places additional pressure on Trenton to explain who knew what, when they knew it, and why thousands of registrations involving individuals who expressly said they weren’t citizens weren’t publicly disclosed — or fully addressed — for roughly two years.
For New Jersey voters, “software error” is no longer much of an answer. Congress now wants the receipts.
NEW: Chairmen @Jim_Jordan, @RepBryanSteil, @Congressman_JVD, and @RepLaurelLee sent a letter to software company IDEMIA requesting information regarding New Jersey registering thousands of noncitizens to vote.
Using IDEMIA’s software, noncitizens noted they weren’t citizens but… pic.twitter.com/1yNlLHStTl
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) August 11, 2026
