President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Wednesday, May 27, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).
The Trump administration says its bid to obtain "unredacted" voter rolls from New Jersey has been bolstered by a recent admission that some 6,600 noncitizens are registered to vote in the Garden State.
On Monday, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced that "a serious software error" led to the noncitizens in question being registered between June 2023 and June 2024 while signing up for driver's licenses. Sherrill went on to blame an outside vendor, the state's Motor Vehicle Commission and the previous administration.
Later that same day, the U.S. Department of Justice seized on the scandal and submitted two quick filings in the months-old federal case to obtain New Jersey's statewide voter registration list.
"Today, the Governor of New Jersey announced that approximately 6,600 self-identified noncitizens were nevertheless registered to vote in New Jersey between June 2023 and June 2024," a letter addressed to the named defendant in the lawsuit reads. "Indeed, approximately 400 of these noncitizens voted in New Jersey's elections."
The letter, sent to New Jersey Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State Dale Caldwell, says the Sherrill revelation "provides an additional basis for the foregoing request" to release the voter rolls.
The DOJ goes on to argue the news implicates the state's "compliance with the list maintenance requirements" of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002.
"The [Elections] Division must also verify that no other noncitizens remain on New Jersey's voter rolls, in violation of federal law," the letter penned by federal prosecutor Jesus A. Osete reads.
An accompanying notice of additional basis alerts U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi, a Joe Biden appointee, to the broad strokes of the Osete-Caldwell letter. The filing briefly reiterates the major points from Sherrill's admission – focusing on the 6,600 people who were "registered … anyway" and how "roughly 400 of those people voted."
"This announcement has received wide media coverage," the notice to the court reads. "While it is currently unknown in which elections those noncitizens voted or whether the ballots those noncitizens cast affected the outcome of any race, Governor Sherrill acknowledged in a press conference the seriousness of noncitizens voting in American elections."
The governor said the registration problem was corrected by 2024 — but that she only learned about the issue last week. Sherrill was elected in November 2025 and took office in January. She also called for an independent investigation into the controversy.
"This entire situation is unacceptable," Sherrill said at a later press conference. "It's unacceptable that the vendor released software with such a glaring error. It's unacceptable that the MVC 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 acted when it happened years ago."
The Trump administration sued New Jersey for its full voter list in February; the arguments advanced in the Monday court filings are claims that were also made in the original 10-page complaint.
The DOJ sued New Jersey after two separate requests — sent in July and August 2025 — for the voter data were denied.
The lawsuit outlines the data requested:
[T]he current electronic copy of New Jersey's computerized voter registration list, with all fields, including each registrant's full name, date of birth, residential address, and either their Driver's License number, the last four digits of their Social Security number, or [Help America Vote Act] unique identifier as required by 52 U.S.C. § 21083…
The federal government's effort to obtain the state's voter rolls is of a piece with a broader effort across the country.
The Trump administration ultimately filed 30 such lawsuits after being rebuked by state officials. To date, however, the government has lost half of those lawsuits. Results in the other half are pending.
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