New Jersey's voter-registration system produced about 1,090 more improper registrations, Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced Wednesday, Oct. 7, weeks before Cherry Hill voters head to the polls for the Nov. 3 general election.
A state review of the Motor Vehicle Commission (MVC) found two categories of errors, neither involving noncitizens, according to the governor's statement. About 750 people who selected "no" on an age-eligibility prompt were registered anyway because of the same IDEMIA software glitch that previously registered roughly 6,600 noncitizens between June 2023 and June 2024. The state confirmed all 750 were actually of voting age based on their dates of birth.
No underage person voted.
Of those 750 records, about 380 people never voted and are being deleted from the rolls. Roughly 320 who have other potentially valid registrations and did vote are being referred to county election officials. About 50 who were registered solely because of the error and voted are being deleted and referred to counties.
A separate category turned up about 340 registrations from MVC re-entry events dating to 2016. Some individuals attested to eligibility while serving prison sentences for indictable offenses, according to WHYY. About 60 of those people were incarcerated at the time of registration. Those names are being sent to county election officials.
New daily audit and multilingual tools
Sherrill directed the MVC to implement a daily pre-transfer audit that compares every voter-registration record against the agency's database before transmission. The system flags incomplete or inconsistent records for manual review and blocks records with missing or conflicting information from going out.
The MVC is also expanding voter-registration questions into five languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi and Simplified Chinese. Handheld translation devices supporting more than 80 languages will be placed at every MVC office, along with multilingual signage. At re-entry events, new PIN pad prompts will require applicants to confirm they are not currently incarcerated for an indictable offense.
The agency is transitioning away from IDEMIA to a new vendor, according to the governor's statement.
Republicans push for legislative probe
State Senate Republican Leader Tony Bucco called the findings "more evidence that there were serious weaknesses in New Jersey's voter registration system." He and Sen. Kristin Corrado have sponsored Senate Bill 4616, which would eliminate automatic voter registration at the MVC, require voter identification and mandate biannual audits.
Bucco is also pushing Senate Resolution 110 to create a special seven-member Senate committee to investigate the glitches. He demanded the release of a pending report from CSG Law, the Roseland-based firm Sherrill's administration hired over the summer to investigate the original error. That report had not been made public as of Oct. 7, Gothamist reported.
The Oct. 7 announcement adds to an already large remediation effort. Sherrill said in August that her administration had deleted about 5,100 noncitizens from the rolls and referred another 1,450 registrations to counties for review. The Republican National Committee sued Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell and other election officials in September seeking records tied to those registrations, according to NJ Spotlight News.
Cherry Hill's voter-registration deadline for the general election is Tuesday, Oct. 13. Residents can check their status through the state's online registration-check tool. Early voting runs Oct. 24 through Nov. 1.
