New Jersey discovered that 6,600 noncitizens were chilling on its voter rolls, and nearly 400 of them actually cast ballots. So naturally, the state's response was to slam the door shut and refuse to let federal investigators peek at the data. Nothing says 'we have nothing to hide' quite like hiding everything, right?
As USA Journal reported, President Trump highlighted these voter fraud concerns during a primetime address back in July, presenting what he described as evidence rather than opinion. Mainstream media outlets and Democrats quickly labeled it all false and misleading. Then New Jersey went ahead and basically proved the point by confirming thousands of noncitizen registrations while simultaneously refusing to share the records.
Governor Mikie Sherrill declined to hand over the information, and when the DOJ sued to force disclosure, the case landed in front of U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi. Quraishi, a Biden appointee with a donation history favoring Democrats, tossed the lawsuit with prejudice. That means the DOJ cannot refile using the same legal argument. Game over on that particular play.
Now here is where it gets spicy. This is the same judge who back in February 2026 accused the U.S. Attorney's office in New Jersey of deliberately violating his immigration orders, said they had "lost credibility," and threatened to demand sworn testimony before every future immigration arrest. So yeah, totally neutral arbiter of election law disputes involving a Democratic governor.
Quraishi ruled that New Jersey's computerized voter registration system falls outside what the Civil Rights Act of 1960 covers regarding record inspection. He noted that seventeen other district courts and one federal appeals court reached similar conclusions against DOJ voter roll access theories. That is a real legal hurdle, not just partisan gamesmanship, even if the referee seems to be wearing one team's jersey.
Meanwhile, Governor Sherrill lovingly referred to those 6,600 noncitizens as "citizens of New Jersey" when explaining her refusal to cooperate. The software company IDEMIA pushed back on her claim that registrations resulted from a glitch, pointing out that state election officials manually approved each one. So it was not the computers. It was the humans running the computers.
New Jersey has operated automatic voter registration since 2018, and Sherrill's admission only covered a single year of data. Without access to the full database, nobody can determine whether 6,600 is the whole enchilada or just the appetizer sampler.
The Trump administration is expected to appeal. Harmeet Dhillon stated publicly that they would obtain the data regardless. The Third Circuit may prove friendlier territory than Quraishi's courtroom. Even Politico acknowledged that gaming the voting system as a noncitizen is apparently not that difficult, prompting Brit Hume to suggest maybe people should stop mocking those concerned about it.
November sits 97 days away. The appeal clock is ticking. And New Jersey continues guarding those voter rolls like they contain the Colonel's secret recipe. One has to wonder, if everything were perfectly clean, why fight this hard to keep the records locked up?
Read more conservative news commentary at: USA Journal News
