A French technology company is firing back at New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill after she blamed a software “glitch” for registering more than 6,000 non-citizens to vote in the state.
Sherrill made the announcement at a press conference Tuesday, saying a software error in the Motor Vehicle Commission’s system led to roughly 6,600 non-citizens being registered to vote. The registrations happened between June 2023 and June 2024, when individuals applying for driver’s licenses and ID cards self-reported that they were not U.S. citizens. According to Sherrill, those individuals answered “no” when asked on a keypad whether they were a citizen, but the system registered them anyway.
The governor said a preliminary review found fewer than 400 of those individuals had actually cast ballots. She announced the state would remove the registrations from voter rolls, launch an outside investigation, and that the Motor Vehicle Commission had begun replacing the vendor tied to the system.
That vendor, IDEMIA, has a very different version of events. As originally reported, the company pushed back hard on the characterization that a glitch in its software was to blame.
IDEMIA released a statement saying the data it collected and submitted was entirely consistent with the design specifications set by the state. “The 6,600 records submitted to the Motor Vehicle Commission and Division of Elections contained correct information according to the design specifications as set out by the state,” a company spokesperson said. “All 6,600 individuals indicated ‘Yes’ to wanting to register to vote and ‘NO’ to being a US Citizen.”
The company was direct: “At no point was a noncitizen ever marked as a citizen in the database.”
IDEMIA also made clear that its role in the process is limited to collecting information, not managing who ultimately gets added to voter rolls. “IDEMIA does not control or manage voter enrollment, our role is simply to collect self-reported citizenship and interest data,” the company said.
The vendor went further, raising pointed questions about what happened after the data left its hands. If the Division of Elections received records with missing required information, why were those individuals added to the voter rolls? IDEMIA also noted the data it transmitted lacked details like party affiliation, raising additional questions about the approval process.
The controversy has now drawn federal attention. The U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has opened a formal investigation into the matter. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the division, addressed the situation directly. “Today, NJ Gov. Sherrill stated that 400 non-citizens voted in elections. This is unacceptable and illegal. The Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department is investigating this unlawful dilution of American votes,” she said.
With a software vendor, a state government, and now federal investigators all pointing in different directions, the full story of how thousands of non-citizens ended up registered, and some voting, is still unfolding.