Well, well, well. If it isn't the consequences of terrible software coming home to roost. New Jersey's Democratic Governor Mikie Sherrill has acknowledged that approximately 6,600 non-citizens were mistakenly placed on the state's voter registration lists prior to the 2024 election. Of that group, under 400 actually went ahead and voted. That's a pretty awkward look for a party that spent years telling everyone concerns about election integrity were tinfoil hat territory.
So what caused this spectacular bureaucratic belly flop? According to Sherrill, a software glitch inside the state's Motor Vehicle Commission decided to play a fun little prank on democracy. The system was automatically registering non-citizens as voters even when those very people had explicitly checked the box saying they were NOT U.S. citizens. You know, the one box that literally exists to prevent this exact scenario. The computer just said "nah, I know better" and signed them right up. This technological rebellion reportedly ran wild from June 2023 through June 2024, all happening under the watch of former Governor Phil Murphy, also a Democrat.
Sherrill says she only found out about the whole fiasco last week, at which point she did what any reasonable person would do and ordered her chief counsel to investigate immediately. She also demanded that every incorrectly registered person get scrubbed from the rolls and announced that the MVC Administrator she appointed is working on ditching the vendor who built this magnificent piece of failing technology.
In an interesting twist, Sherrill pointed out that the roughly 400 people who cast ballots weren't all pulling for one team. They registered across the political spectrum as Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters, scattered throughout the entire state. So at least the software was bipartisan in its incompetence.
Leaning heavily on her resume as a military veteran and former federal prosecutor, Sherrill called election integrity a cornerstone of American democracy. She described herself as "appalled" by what she characterized as reckless failures and a stunning lack of transparency from those who were running things when the glitch was happening. Translation: Phil Murphy, this one's on you, buddy.
While making it crystal clear she had nothing to do with the original screw up, Sherrill announced she's taking full ownership of cleaning up the mess, declaring that accountability begins now. Better late than never, one supposes.
The bigger question nobody seems eager to answer is whether other states running similar automatic voter registration systems tied to their motor vehicle databases might have the exact same problem lurking in their code. If New Jersey's system was cheerfully ignoring people who literally said "I am not a citizen," what are the odds every other state's software is performing flawlessly? Somewhere between slim and absolutely not, if history is any guide.
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