Error Led to 400 Noncitizens Voting, New Jersey Governor Says

Roughly 400 noncitizens cast ballots in New Jersey after about 6,600 residents were improperly registered to vote between June 2023 and June 2024 because of a software error at the Motor Vehicle Commission, Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced on Tuesday.

All the people affected had disclosed that they were not citizens when seeking either a driver’s license or ID, but were nonetheless placed on the voter rolls in error.

Those people will be removed from the voter rolls. The governor said she feared that they might now be at risk of federal prosecution or unexpected hurdles — “through no fault of their own” — as they worked toward becoming citizens.

“We are working very hard to protect them,” Ms. Sherrill, a Democrat who took office in January, said at a news conference.

The New York Times could not independently verify the figures disclosed on Tuesday.

The software vendor that Ms. Sherrill said was responsible for the error, Idemia, was being phased out of use in New Jersey, the governor said.

The state had “no evidence, at this time, that any elections were swayed,” she noted, including the 2024 presidential contest.

Officials with Idemia, a technology company based in Virginia with offices around the world, did not respond to calls or emails requesting comment.

Officials within the Sherrill administration became aware of the “serious software error” last week, the governor said, and began an immediate investigation. The error was discovered and corrected in 2024, while Philip D. Murphy was governor, but never publicly disclosed, Ms. Sherrill said.

A spokesman for Mr. Murphy, a Democrat who served for two terms, did not reply to emails, calls or a text message.

Ms. Sherrill was unstinting in her criticism of the way the Murphy administration handled the problem, citing “reckless failures.”

“It’s unacceptable that the vendor released software with such a glaring error. It’s unacceptable that the M.V.C. took a year to get this issue fixed. And it’s unacceptable that no one in the previous administration brought this to light, demanded accountability or took action when it happened years ago,” Ms. Sherrill said.

The finding that roughly 400 noncitizens had cast ballots in New Jersey is one of the larger confirmed instances of noncitizens voting in American elections. But it remains an exceptionally small percentage of the overall vote total.

If those 400 noncitizens had all voted in the state’s local elections in 2023, they would constitute just 0.02 percent of the electorate. If they voted in the 2024 presidential election, those 400 noncitizens would make up about 0.009 percent of the state’s overall vote totals.

Kamala Harris, the former vice president who ran against President Trump in 2024, won New Jersey by more than 252,000 votes.

The findings may nonetheless add fuel to claims by Mr. Trump and his allies that noncitizens are illegally on voter rolls nationwide and are casting ballots in elections in wide numbers, as the president makes a final pitch to Congress to pass the SAVE America Act. The act would limit mail voting and add a documentary proof of citizenship requirement to voting.

“Democrats and their media allies have repeatedly said it is impossible for noncitizens to register to vote, let alone cast a ballot,” a White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, said Tuesday in an email.

“American voters deserve to have confidence that our elections are safe and secure,” she added.

David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonpartisan group, said that administrative errors such as the one that took place in New Jersey were rare, but “do infrequently occur.”

He said that state officials, not the federal government, were best positioned to address problems when they happen.

“They have access to substantially better data than the federal government,” Mr. Becker said in a statement, adding that “noncitizen registration remains extremely rare, and noncitizen voting is infinitesimally rare.”

Joe Gruters, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said that the disclosure confirmed information the party had also learned through a public records request. Mr. Gruters, a state senator in Florida, said that it was further evidence of a need for Congress to pass the SAVE America Act.

“Democrats keep claiming this never happens,” Mr. Gruters said in a statement, “yet every new discovery tells the same old story. Enough excuses.”

Ms. Sherrill contrasted her decision to publicly disclose the error with what she called Mr. Trump’s efforts to “weaponize elections for political gain.”

“For the past 10 years, he’s cried wolf and peddled bizarre conspiracy theories about fraud with no evidence,” Ms. Sherrill said.

“Trump could care less about the actual integrity of the process,” she added. “His only concern is himself.”

It is unclear how long Idemia had provided software in New Jersey. The company says on its website that it works with more than 600 government agencies and state and federal organizations.

Idemia is being replaced in New Jersey by Talus Software, according to Rosalie Johnson, who leads the Motor Vehicle Commission. “I know that M.V.C. has work to do to rebuild trust,” Ms. Johnson said on Tuesday.

To protect migrants who might have been unwittingly registered to vote, Ms. Sherrill said the state would hold firm to its practice of not releasing “personally identifying information to the federal government.” She also said that the New Jersey Innovation Authority, which she created this year, was working to ensure that electronic pin pads used at election sites displayed voting rules in five languages, to safeguard against misunderstanding. (The rules now appear only in English, she said.)

“We will be looking at different possibilities of making our elections more secure going forward,” Ms. Sherrill said.

In 2019, New Jersey adopted a law that allows undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. Those eligible to vote may also register at a motor vehicle agency when applying for, or renewing, licenses or nondriver identification cards.

The New Jersey attorney general’s office notified Ms. Sherrill of the software error last Wednesday, state officials said, but offered no additional details about how the failure was detected. The state has since hired a private law firm to lead an independent investigation of the error. Ms. Sherrill said that she would publicize the final analysis.

“We will be holding — I will be holding — people accountable,” she said.

Nicholas Corasaniti contributed reporting.