Oh, this is beautiful. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill held a press conference Tuesday to announce that a pesky software "glitch" somehow registered around 6,600 non-citizens to vote. The technology company responsible for the software took one look at that accusation and basically said, "Ma'am, that's on you."
As originally reported, between June 2023 and June 2024, people applying for driver's licenses and state ID cards were asked on a keypad whether they were U.S. citizens. Roughly 6,600 individuals pressed "no" on that question. They also pressed "yes" when asked if they wanted to register to vote. And somehow, despite literally telling the system they weren't citizens, they got registered anyway. A preliminary review found that fewer than 400 of those people actually cast ballots.
Sherrill announced the state would scrub those registrations from voter rolls, launch an outside investigation, and start replacing the vendor connected to the system. That vendor is a French company called IDEMIA, and they are not taking this lying down.
IDEMIA released a statement that was, shall we say, diplomatically savage. The company said all 6,600 records it submitted contained accurate information that matched the design specifications the state itself laid out. Every single one of those records clearly showed the person said "yes" to voter registration and "no" to being a citizen. The company was crystal clear: "At no point was a noncitizen ever marked as a citizen in the database."
So basically, IDEMIA collected the information, handed it over with a giant flashing neon sign that said "NOT A CITIZEN," and someone on the state's end apparently went ahead and added them to the voter rolls anyway. The company also pointed out that it doesn't control or manage voter enrollment at all. Its job is literally just gathering data.
IDEMIA even twisted the knife a little further, asking why the Division of Elections would approve records that were missing required information like party affiliation. That's a pretty solid question that somebody in Trenton is going to have to answer eventually.
The situation has now attracted federal scrutiny. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has opened a formal investigation. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon called the situation "unacceptable and illegal," describing it as "unlawful dilution of American votes."
So let's recap the current blame game scoreboard. The Governor says it was a software problem. The software company says it did exactly what New Jersey told it to do. And federal investigators are now poking around asking everyone uncomfortable questions. You've got a state government, a tech vendor, and the feds all pointing fingers in completely different directions.
The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that thousands of non-citizens ended up on voter rolls when they shouldn't have been. How that happened depends entirely on who you ask. Grab your popcorn, folks, because this blame tornado is just getting started.
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