While most of the coverage of New Jersey’s noncitizen registration debacle has focused on the 6,600 people erroneously added to the voter rolls, another set of figures is proving far more tantalizing to observers of the controversy. While the company responsible, French-owned Idemia, is set to lose the state contract related to the registration fiasco, state spending documents reveal that in addition to the aformentioned 6,600 voters, the company currently has three distinct contracts in place in the state of New Jersey, for which the company has earned a total of approximately 61.1 million dollars thus far.
The contract that has drawn the most attention, due to its involvement with the registration problem, is also the shortest in duration. The agreement, made in January 2010, wither expire in January 2027 and thus far has earned Idemia 35.7 million dollars. This is the contract that allowed for the implementation of the automated registration system responsible for adding thousands of noncitizens to the voter rolls between June 2023 and June 2024, and which Governor Mikie Sherrill’s administration has stated its intent to cancel following the incident.
Meanwhile, the other two contracts with Idemia, which have thus far earned the company an additional 3.8 and 21.6 million dollars respectively, have received little to no attention. The first of these is a contract, dated January 2019 and set to expire in January 2027, for the development of an electronic fingerprint system used by the New Jersey State Police. The second is a more expansive agreement, dated May 2019 and set to expire in May 2027, which allows Idemia to provide “electronic fingerprinting services for non-criminal justice agencies, including but not limited to background checks, and other non-criminal justice uses.” Combined with the soon-to-be-canceled motor vehicle contract, these two additional agreements grant Idemia a far-reaching foothold in the state’s identification management system, extending far beyond the single contract involved in the current registration scandal.
A spokesperson for Governor Sherrill has confirmed that she intends to cancel the motor vehicle contract, but has not responded to inquiries regarding the status of the other two agreements, an omission which has also proven politically contentious. Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia, a Republican representing Sussex County and one of the instigators of the bipartisan legislative effort to investigate the registration scandal, has accused Sherrill’s people of “not wanting to sever the lucrative contracts for State Police and background check services altogether,” suggesting that doing so only for the motor vehicle contract involved in the registration fiasco is at best “hypocrisy,” and at worst “willful blindness.”
Meanwhile, Idemia has denied any responsibility for the registration debacle, arguing that it serves only as a conduit for the information provided by drivers, and that any errors are the responsibility of the Division of Elections, which failed to exercise proper oversight. In one particularly pointed response to criticism, a company spokesperson went so far as to argue that the company’s system does not “glitch” at all and merely follows instructions, whether those instructions come from citizens registering for the first time or from the Division of Elections.
The controversy has since spilled over into the federal government, where New Jersey Congressman Josh Gottheimer has written to the federal General Services Administration and Office of Management and Budget to investigate Idemia’s contracts with the federal government, arguing that due to the company’s pervasiveness within the federal government, its influence could extend to a “wide range of federal programs, including TSA PreCheck.” Gottheimer’s letters to the agencies suggest that he views New Jersey’s problems with Idemia as only the “tip of the iceberg” and has expressed an intent to investigate whether the company’s “reach extends well beyond state voter rolls and driver’s licenses,” touching on “critical areas such as biometrics and national security.”
Beyond the general consternation at the mere fact that the state’s ability to verify voters was even delegated to a private contractor in the first place, the debate over Idemia’s role in New Jersey is largely divided along party lines. Republicans argue that the scandal reveals a far greater problem, namely that New Jersey has been far too reliant on outsourced voter management software in general and(Idemia in particular, as the company’s involvement also comes with the state’s decision to permit undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, which they were barred from doing prior to the 2016 law).Democrats respond by arguing that the problem lies exclusively in the specific circumstances of the scandal in question and that, save for the single faulty registration system, the rest of the state’s management apparatus proved reliable when the issue arose, enabling the proper removal of illegal voters and registration errors before they could cause further damage.
The likelihood of either party attempting to repeal the other contracts with Idemia depends entirely on the extent of the political pressure applied, particularly on the federal level, due to Gottheimer’s intervention. The prospect of a state-level legislative audit of the company’s involvement in the registration fiasco and the prospect of an official federal investigation into the company’s other contracts also play a role, as does the general antipathy towards Idemia’s involvement with state affairs in general. With the cancellation of the motor vehicle contract only confirming the suspicions of critics, the future of the other two contracts remains a major topic of debate and speculation, which has little to do with the original voter registration scandal itself and everything to do with the larger system of privatized voter roll management.
