Donald Trump and his political allies used an announcement from New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill regarding a voter registration software error to escalate claims about noncitizens on voter rolls. Sherrill disclosed that between 2023 and 2024, approximately 6,600 individuals who indicated they were not citizens had been registered to vote through the state’s automatic voter registration system. Of that group, fewer than 400 actually cast ballots. The state noted that both Democrats and Republicans were erroneously registered, with the majority unaffiliated with either party.
Trump cited the incident in a post on Truth Social, claiming that 35,152 noncitizens had been registered to vote in New Jersey and asserting that the actual numbers would be “many times this amount.” His statement came days after he cited a Department of Homeland Security figure of 278,000 noncitizens on voter rolls across four states including New Jersey. However, a review of DHS correspondence shows the agency expressed less certainty about the number and provided limited explanation of its methodology. The DHS letter to New Jersey cited a potential ceiling of 35,152 noncitizens but stated it had definitively matched only 19,497 records to noncitizens in its system.
Election administration experts and officials from both parties have questioned the credibility of the claims. Stephen Richer, a Republican who oversaw elections in Maricopa County, Arizona, characterized the situation as an administrative error rather than evidence of widespread fraud, noting that most registered noncitizens chose not to vote despite receiving election materials. David Becker, an election administration expert, calculated that the potential ballots cast from New Jersey’s registration errors represented roughly 0.009% of all ballots cast in the state’s 2024 general election, which Harris won by more than 250,000 votes.
Election officials and experts raised significant concerns about the DHS methodology. The agency relied on the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, which has a history of errors and typically requires identifiers not ordinarily contained in public voter files. DHS provided no explanation for the gap between the 118,000 records it claimed to match and the broader 278,000 figure. Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar stated the DHS had not provided his state with supporting evidence or a list of suspected noncitizens as of mid-week.
The incident occurred amid a broader effort by Republicans to question election integrity ahead of midterm elections. Legislation has been proposed to impose new proof-of-citizenship requirements on voter registration, despite studies indicating noncitizen voting is extremely rare. Historical precedent suggests initial claims of widespread noncitizen voting often significantly diminish after investigation. Texas, for example, later withdrew a 2019 claim involving nearly 100,000 suspected noncitizens after acknowledging the data was flawed.
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