A month after disclosing a software error that mistakenly registered thousands of noncitizens to vote, Governor Mikie Sherrill’s administration has released the specific breakdown of who has been removed, who remains under review, and how many actually cast a ballot.
New Jersey Just Deleted 5,100 Voter Registrations. Here’s the Full Math Behind That Number.
Governor Mikie Sherrill’s administration has released a detailed update on New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle Commission voter registration error, reporting that roughly 5,100 people have now been deleted entirely from the state’s voter rolls, with another 1,450 registrations flagged for further county level review before anyone in that group can vote. The update marks the most granular public accounting yet of a controversy that has run since late July, when Sherrill first disclosed that a software error had improperly registered as many as 6,600 noncitizens to vote between June 2023 and June 2024, entirely under the prior administration.
How New Jersey Got Here
The underlying error traces back to New Jersey’s automatic voter registration process at Motor Vehicle Commission locations, where applicants renewing a license or ID are asked directly, via an electronic keypad, whether they are U.S. citizens. Sherrill has said the roughly 6,600 individuals at the center of this controversy explicitly answered no to that question, indicating they were not eligible to vote, yet a vendor software failure transmitted their information into the state’s voter registration system anyway, register them despite that clear ineligibility declaration. The registrations occurred between June 2023 and June 2024, while Latricia Littles-Floyd led the Motor Vehicle Commission under former Governor Phil Murphy, nearly three years before Sherrill’s own administration learned of the problem.
Jul 21, 2026 Sherrill publicly discloses the error, orders investigation
Late Jul 2026 ~4,500 begin removal; letters mailed to affected individuals
Aug 19, 2026 Update: 5,100 deleted, 1,450 referred to counties for review
What the New Numbers Actually Show
Registrations fully deleted from the rolls, individuals who had no other registration transaction or eligibility attestation on file, meaning they were on the rolls solely due to the software error.
Registrations changed to rejected status and referred to county election officials for further review, since these individuals had separate registration history or attestations requiring closer examination before a final determination.
Individuals from the original 6,600 who actually cast a ballot, a figure Sherrill’s administration has said represents a small enough share of statewide turnout that no election outcome was affected.
Additional individuals who voted and were affected by the software error, but who also have separate registration history suggesting their registration may in fact be valid, now referred to counties for individual review.
A Political Fight That Hasn’t Cooled Off
Sherrill has been direct in contrasting her administration’s handling of the issue with how Republicans and the Trump administration have responded to it, saying in her latest statement that the opposing side’s only interest has been using the controversy for political gain. Republican legislators have pushed back forcefully on that framing. Senate Minority Leader Anthony Bucco has continued calling for a bipartisan legislative investigation even after this latest round of rolls cleanup, arguing that shutting down the system to correct the rolls does not answer the broader questions still surrounding how the error occurred and how long it went undetected. Bucco has also pointed to specific county level findings as evidence the state’s own initial figures may not capture the full scope of the problem, citing more than 100 additional voters Ocean County identified and removed after the statewide system came back online, a dozen of whom had already voted, some of whom Bucco says were not actually registered through the MVC process at the center of the original disclosure at all.
Separately, the U.S. Department of Justice has called on Sherrill’s administration to turn over voter information related to the affected registrations, adding a federal dimension to a controversy that state officials have so far characterized purely as a state level software and administrative failure. IDEMIA, the technology vendor whose software transmitted the erroneous registrations, has stated publicly that its role is limited to transmitting information through the motor vehicle system, characterizing the underlying registration processing itself as a matter for the state’s own Department of Elections.
What Happens From Here
Sherrill’s administration has directed county election officials to complete their review of the remaining flagged registrations before voting begins in this fall’s elections, a deadline meant to ensure ineligible individuals are fully removed from the rolls while eligible voters caught up in the error’s broader net are not mistakenly disenfranchised in the process. The state’s own investigation into how the underlying software failure occurred, and why it went undetected for roughly three years, remains ongoing. Sherrill has tied the broader cleanup effort directly to the John R. Lewis Voter Empowerment Act, a voting rights law she signed earlier this summer that establishes state preclearance requirements, bans voter intimidation, and creates a public statewide election database, framing the current remediation work as evidence of exactly the kind of accountable, transparent election administration that law was designed to reinforce. Whether that framing satisfies legislative critics still pushing for a separate, bipartisan investigation remains an open question likely to keep playing out over the weeks leading into November.
