Why Are There Thousands of Noncitizens on New Jersey's Voter Rolls? Blame Blue State Policies
Sloppy voter rolls and fraudulent voting are the inevitable products of weak blue-state elections.
New Jersey officials recently admitted that between June 2023 and June 2024, the Motor Vehicle Commission (MVC) registered roughly 6,600 noncitizens. About 400 of these people cast ballots.
This is the predictable result of Democrat-backed policies that prioritize ballot access over security.
These are individuals who truthfully answered "no" when asked if they were United States citizens while applying for driver's licenses, yet the system still funneled their information onto the voter rolls.
But it's likely that New Jersey's Democrat leadership is downplaying the extent of noncitizen registration. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has since announced that federal records matched as many as 19,500 noncitizens on publicly available New Jersey voter registration records.
Rather than take responsibility for the laws on the books that enabled this, Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) blamed her predecessor's administration. She even downplayed the hundreds of fraudulent votes cast because they allegedly didn't change the outcome of any elections.
But the hazard this creates is more important. Just because these votes might not have swayed an election doesn't mean the risk is small. Many local races are decided by razor-thin margins that absolutely could be altered by a few dozen noncitizens.
Republican National Lawyers Association President Michael Thielen mentions a few such recent elections in the state where that was the case:
- A township school bond referendum was decided by one vote.
- The Trenton City Council president was elected by one vote.
- An Oakland Borough council seat race resulted in a tie.
But whether they decide election outcomes or not, noncitizen ballots dilute the votes of actual citizens.
New Jersey Election Laws Create Moral Hazard
Federal law requires accurate voter lists. Yet New Jersey has made noncitizen registration far too easy.
In 2018, then-Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed automatic voter registration (AVR) legislation. Under this opt-out "motor voter" system, MVC applicants are registered unless they decline. It relies almost entirely on self-attestation of citizenship, with data transmitted electronically. Yet, as evidenced by the 6,600 registered noncitizens, county review proved thin, which Sherrill blamed on software failure.
Adding to the problem is New Jersey's 2019 law—which Murphy also signed—allowing illegal aliens to obtain standard driver's licenses. These feed directly into the AVR pipeline.
Without documentary proof of citizenship and with no photo ID requirement at the polls, the state created clear pathways for noncitizens to reach the rolls and the ballot box.
Republicans have long warned that combining noncitizen licenses with opt-out registration would produce exactly this result—warnings Democrats routinely dismiss just as they dismiss the need for proof of citizenship to register or a photo ID to vote.
What New Jersey Must Change to Prevent This from Happening
Keeping noncitizens off its voting rolls and away from ballots requires New Jersey to fix the laws that enabled it.
First, instead of becoming defensive for partisan reasons, Sherrill and Democrats in the New Jersey legislature should recognize that they have a problem. By denying that voter fraud is a possibility, the entire Democratic Party has set itself up for these types of problems.
Next, New Jersey needs to require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register and a government-issued photo ID to vote rather than simple attestation. Proof of citizenship can be a birth certificate, a passport, or naturalization papers. A government-issued photo ID can be a driver's license, passport, hunting or fishing license, firearm license, or a special voter card.
These safeguards constitute the core of the federal Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act that has passed the House of Representatives but stalled in the Senate, thanks largely to Democratic opposition.
But whether passed at the federal or local level, as many states have done, these are crucial requirements that ensure noncitizens don't register to vote or cast ballots.
Then, there is additional moral hazard that New Jersey brings on itself with AVR and letting illegal aliens drive. Roughly half the states have AVR, but only the most liberal states and Utah issue driver's license to illegal aliens. If New Jersey citizens insist on the former, they should definitely repeal the latter. At the very least, they should require drivers to opt in to AVR by showing proof of citizenship.
New Jersey's noncitizen voter rolls aren't a fluke. They are the direct, foreseeable result of a system built to boost registration numbers and provide ballot access instead of election security. AVR, driver's licenses for illegal aliens, and attestation-only citizenship checks were never going to produce anything else. New Jersey's elected officials could easily fix the problem. But this requires them to admit that their policies caused it.
MORE ELECTION INTEGRITY NEWS:
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NONCITIZEN VOTING: Appeals Court Ruling Leaves Us Vulnerable to Noncitizen Voting—Why It Matters
INTERVIEW: Patrick Byrne Exposes Deep State Operations and Foreign Election Interference
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