Registered New Jersey voters pick a new governor in the Nov. 4 general election, but before that the state really needs to clean up its voter list.
After reviewing New Jersey’s statewide voter roll, a report from the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) shows an “urgent need for improved list maintenance practices,” after identifying more than 32,000 registration issues, many of which could allow people to vote more than once.
PILF found 14,059 duplicate registrations, with voters registered in New Jersey and at least one other state at the same time. But PILF did not look at all 50 states, meaning there are certainly more to be found. PILF identified duplicate registrations in New Jersey and Florida (6,972 cases), New York (5,725), and Pennsylvania (925).
PILF also found 15,655 registrations using fictitious birth dates, which are sometimes used as placeholders — such as New Jersey’s most common placeholder date, 1800-01-01, that is, 225 years ago. The PILF report found 5,166 such birthdates in Essex County, 2,108 in Passaic County, and 1,928 in Middlesex County.
Of the 15,655 registrations with bad birth dates, 85 percent are marked as active voters, the report shows. But PILF says it is an easy fix. The organization took a random sample of 10 such registrations and compared the “New Jersey voter roll, Social Security records, and Experian reports,” and within minutes found the correct birthdates for all 10. PILF found that seven voter registrations were accurate after the proper birth date was added; Social Security records indicated that two registered voters had died more than 20 years ago; and one individual had seemingly relocated to St. Lucie County, Florida, and registered to vote there in 2017.
Hellbound and Down 