he political earthquake from the revelation of New Jersey’s tainted voter lists — with some 6,600 noncitizens registered to vote — have produced another aftershock: Gov. Mikie Sherrill announcing support for some form of voter ID. A chorus of left-wing groups immediately cried foul. And, it’s unlikely that Democrats in the general assembly, who hold a supermajority, would ever pass a voter ID bill. The upshot being that Gov. Sherrill’s comments are merely designed to turn the temperature down on the noncitizen voter scandal.
It was only three weeks ago that Gov. Sherrill blamed a “serious software error” at the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission for improperly registering thousands of noncitizens to vote between June 2023 and June 2024. About 400 of them cast ballots. The affected individuals had answered “no” when asked if they were U.S. citizens while applying for driver’s licenses or IDs. Yet the system enrolled them anyway.
Sherrill, a Democrat who took office after the period in question, blamed the vendor and her predecessor’s administration. She ordered the names removed, promised an investigation, and fretted that these noncitizens might face federal consequences “through no fault of their own.”
But the software company, IDEMIA, pushed back hard: There was no glitch. The system recorded the “no” answers correctly and transmitted the data as the state had designed the process. Officials had citizenship information available the entire time.
This was not a mere coding mishap. It was the predictable outgrowth of a political culture that treats elections not as the exclusive right of citizens but rather as a mere census exercise — a headcount of certain groups who are expected to owe allegiance to the left.
In a recent Texas Public Policy Foundation study, “How to Ensure That Only Citizens Vote,” I examined precisely this danger.
Hellbound and Down 