Tag: voting

New Jersey Rejects DOJ’s Request For Records On Noncitizen Voter Registration Error

New Jersey is refusing to hand over information to the U.S. Department of Justice involving a voter registration error that allowed thousands of noncitizens to register to vote in the state.

The DOJ requested the full names, dates of birth, nationalities, residential addresses, and registration dates and locations of 6,600 people involved in the error.

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill rejected the DOJ’s request for the data, saying in a letter on Tuesday that state and federal privacy laws prohibit releasing it.

“The request had no legal basis, and I will always protect New Jerseyans’ personally identifiable information,” Sherrill said on X.

Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ, said the governor’s “refusal to cooperate with federal law enforcement does nothing to protect law-abiding NJ voters.”

“NJ has a legal duty to keep ineligible voters off its rolls, & our request is grounded in that legal authority. DOJ will get this information through all legal means!” she said Tuesday in a post on X.

Sherrill said on July 21 that approximately 6,600 people who indicated they were not U.S. citizens were mistakenly registered to vote because of a software flaw in the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission system.

According to Sherrill, the error affected applicants between June 2023 and June 2024, during the previous administration. While applying for driver’s licenses or state identification cards, the individuals selected “no” when asked on a keypad whether they were U.S. citizens, but they were nevertheless added to the voter rolls due to the software issue.

The governor said a preliminary review found that fewer than 400 of those improperly registered ultimately cast ballots. Those voters included Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters and were spread across New Jersey.

Sherrill said she has directed her chief counsel to investigate how the mistake happened and instructed election officials to remove anyone who was improperly placed on the voter rolls during that timeframe. She said the software problem was corrected in June 2024 but that she only recently became aware of it.

The governor also said the Motor Vehicle Commission administrator she appointed has started replacing the vendor that managed the system.

However, a company that has worked with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle System for more than 40 years suggested the New Jersey government was responsible for the noncitizens being placed on the state’s voter rolls.

IDEMIA, an identification software provider, told The Epoch Times July 22 that the individuals disclaimed U.S. citizenship but also said they indicated “Yes” to wanting to register to vote.

“The voter registration information is transmitted to the New Jersey Department of State, Division of Elections, which is ultimately responsible for verifying eligibility to vote,” the company stated. “Information submitted by IDEMIA must still be validated and adjudicated by the Division of Elections.”

The governor said in the July 21 announcement that she was “appalled” by the failures that allowed the error to occur and vowed that those responsible would be held accountable.

She also accused the Trump administration of trying to “weaponize elections for political gain.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has found that about 278,000 noncitizens were illegally registered to vote in U.S. federal elections after reviewing voter rolls from several states that cooperated and turned over data, according to the White House.

The White House said earlier this month the actual number could be higher because some states did not share their voter files with the federal agency.

The Trump administration has been involved in lawsuits with several states involving access to voter registration rolls.

In April, a U.S. District judge dismissed a lawsuit the Trump administration had filed in Massachusetts to get access to unredacted voter rolls.

The White House said the error in New Jersey “is the direct result of Democrat policies that refuse basic citizenship checks—and exactly why Congress must pass the SAVE America Act immediately,” in a July 21 statement.

The SAVE America Act is a bill that would mandate proof of U.S. citizenship while registering to vote in federal elections, require photo ID verification to vote, and restrict the use of mail-in ballots.

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D.C. Circuit Court Hands Trump Win In Battle Over Mail-In Voting Order

A federal appellate court handed President Trump a decisive win on Tuesday in an ongoing legal battle over his mail-in voting executive order.

In a unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals shot down Democrats’ lawfare against Trump’s March elections order. That directive, as summarized by the court, “directs the Department of Homeland Security, the United States Postal Service, and other agencies to begin developing new rules and procedures for mail voting in the upcoming midterm and future elections.”

The Democrat plaintiffs filed their lawsuit a day after the order was issued. They subsequently asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia a week later to issue a preliminary injunction blocking its enforcement.

The district court rejected that request.

In affirming the lower court’s ruling, the D.C. Circuit panel noted that “while Plaintiffs have identified a number of serious questions concerning the lawfulness of proposed actions if implemented on the threshold of the upcoming federal election, this case likely is unripe for review in its present posture.” In other words, the case is unreviewable at this time because the named agencies haven’t implemented their official rules as required by the president’s order.

“In particular, Plaintiffs’ request for preliminary relief ‘is premised on the threatened impact’ of the Executive Order after it is implemented and if in violation of federal law,” the court ruled. “In addition, the Executive Order, which is not self-executing, directs the agencies to act only to ‘the extent feasible and consistent with applicable law, including but not limited to the Privacy Act of 1974,’ and so requires compliance with the very legal limitations about which Plaintiffs are concerned.”

The appellate court said that plaintiffs may seek relief “[i]f the defendant agencies take steps to implement the Executive Order in a manner that violates federal law or the Constitution.” The panel was comprised of Judges Patricia Millett (Obama appointee), Robert Wilkins (Obama appointee), and Gregory Katsas (Trump appointee).

The ruling was handed down a day after the Trump administration filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court to pause a Massachusetts-based judge’s injunction against the mail-in voting order. Similar to the D.C. Circuit, the Justice Department argued that “the injunction is especially indefensible because the agencies are still deliberating over how (if at all) to implement the Order.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who oversees emergency applications from the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, has given respondents until 4 p.m. ET on Aug. 3 to file a response to the government’s application.

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Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Jackson Denies President Trump’s Request to Immediately Reinstate Key Parts of Executive Order on Mail-In Ballots

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Jackson on Monday evening denied President Trump’s request to immediately reinstate key parts of his executive order on mail-in ballots.

Justice Jackson gave the Democrat-run plaintiff states seven days to respond to Trump’s emergency application.

Last month, a federal judge blocked key parts of President Trump’s executive order on mail-in ballots.

Boston-based US District Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee, blocked President Trump’s March 2025 executive order, specifically his attempt to create a federal voter list.

In March 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14248: Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.

“Free, fair, and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion are fundamental to maintaining our constitutional Republic. The right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted and tabulated, without illegal dilution, is vital to determining the rightful winner of an election,” the executive order said.

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The Documents Washington Never Wanted Released

The White House has now released a series of declassified election-integrity documents that the administration says expose what it describes as the largest compromise of American voter data in history. The release followed President Trump’s heated nationally televised address Thursday night, where he argued that China systematically acquired sensitive voter information during the 2020 election cycle and that intelligence surrounding the operation was buried inside the bureaucracy rather than presented honestly to elected leadership.

For years, the focus has been on Russia while China quietly expanded its economic, technological, and intelligence footprint throughout the West. China does not think in election cycles. It thinks in decades as the ancient culture understands cycles. Every major strategic objective is pursued patiently through economic leverage, technology, data collection, academia, corporations, and political influence. Elections become merely another avenue for intelligence gathering and long-term strategic positioning.

According to the newly released material highlighted by the White House, Chinese actors allegedly obtained information on roughly 220 million American voter records. The administration claims the information included voter registration data, addresses, party affiliation, and other identifying information that could be used to map voting populations across the United States. President Trump described it as “the largest compromise of election data in history” and ordered further investigations into both the alleged intrusion and the government’s handling of the intelligence.

The administration further alleges that portions of this intelligence never reached the President in full during the 2020 election cycle and that internal disputes inside the intelligence community resulted in information being minimized or withheld. Those claims are now at the center of renewed investigations following the release of the declassified files.

Whether every allegation ultimately withstands scrutiny is now the question investigators must answer. It is important to distinguish between allegations contained in newly released documents and conclusions that have been independently established. Previous U.S. intelligence assessments issued after the 2020 election concluded they did not find evidence that China successfully altered votes or election infrastructure, although there has long been bipartisan concern over Chinese cyber activity and influence operations. Those earlier conclusions are directly challenged by the current administration’s interpretation of the newly declassified material.

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Software vendor disputes NJ governor’s ‘glitch’ claim, says state approves foreigners on voter roll

ust hours after New Jersey Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherril blamed a software glitch for thousands of non-citizens being registered to vote, the software company involved issued a statement disputing the claim.

IDEMIA, the software vendor for the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, issued a statement saying it was the responsibility of the state government, which is completely controlled by Democrats, to verify eligibility to vote.

“IDEMIA works with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, and has for more than 40 years, to support the process through which eligible individuals may indicate their interest in registering to vote when applying for or renewing a driver’s license or state-issued identification card. IDEMIA’s role is to transmit information through the motor vehicle system,” IDEMIA said in a statement to Just the News. 

“The voter registration information is transmitted to the New Jersey Department of State, Division of Elections, which is ultimately responsible for verifying eligibility to vote. Information submitted by IDEMIA must still be validated and adjudicated by the Division of Elections.”

Sherrill blamed the software company on Tuesday, Just the News reported, saying the glitch allowed 6,660 non-citizens to register to vote. She also said that as many as 400 of those non-citizens has in fact voted in a recent election, though she claimed those who voted “were registered as Democrats, Republicans and Unaffiliated voters and were scattered across the state.” It is unclear for which candidate the non-citizens voted.

“These individuals answered ‘no’ when asked on a keypad whether they were a U.S. citizen when applying for drivers’ licenses and identification cards, but through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway,” Sherrill said.

Sherrill also said the error occurred under the previous administration of Gov. Phil Murphy, also a Democrat.

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Far-Left Activist First Circuit Judges Block Trump’s Historic Election Integrity Executive Order in 23 Blue States — Protecting Mail-In Ballot Chaos Ahead of 2026 Midterms

A Biden-appointed majority on the First Circuit Court of Appeals handed President Donald Trump a major setback Saturday, refusing to lift an injunction blocking key election-integrity provisions of his executive order in 23 states and the District of Columbia.

The three-judge panel denied emergency stay requests filed by the Trump administration and 12 Republican-led states, leaving in place a lower-court order that prevents the Department of Homeland Security from distributing federal citizenship lists and blocks the U.S. Postal Service from applying new mail-ballot requirements in the plaintiff states for elections held on or before November 3, 2026.

Judges Gustavo Gelpí and Julie Rikelman, both appointed to the First Circuit by Joe Biden, formed the majority.

Trump-appointed Judge Joshua Dunlap concurred in part and dissented in part, arguing that the states lacked standing to block DHS from merely providing citizenship information.

The ruling is not a final decision on the administration’s appeal. Instead, the 20-page court order denies the administration’s request to suspend the injunction while the appeal proceeds.

The administration could now seek emergency relief from the U.S. Supreme Court.

President Trump issued Executive Order 14399, titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” on March 31 to enforce existing federal law that reserves federal elections exclusively for U.S. citizens and to bring basic accountability to the chaotic, fraud-prone mail-in ballot process.

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Over 148,000 Mail Ballots Rejected In California’s Primary Election, Data Show

Election data that was provided by California state officials for last month’s primary elections show that more than 148,000 mail-in ballots were rejected, an uptick of more than 40,000 from the 2024 primary.

All in all, 148,241 were rejected in the state’s June 2 primary election, according to data released by the California Secretary of State’s office, which manages elections. The figure represents 1.73 percent of all mail-in ballots.

According to the data released earlier this month, more than 93,000 mail-in ballots were rejected by officials because they arrived too late. Another 8,300 were rejected because there was no voter signature on the ballot, and nearly 44,000 were rejected due to a non-matching signature.

Meanwhile, some 580 weren’t used because no photo ID was provided, more than 740 were rejected because the voter had already voted, around 640 were rejected because the ballot was missing from the envelope, and roughly 450 were flagged as having multiple ballots in each envelope, the election figures show.

The data provided by the office did not list the rejected ballots by party registration.

The rejection rates varied by county, with Tulare County having the highest rate at 3.52 percent. Alpine and Merced counties saw 3.36 percent rejection rates, according to the data. The lowest was reported in Placer County, with a 0.93 percent rejection rate.

Los Angeles County, the county with the highest population and most voters, reported a 1.34 percent rejection rate, while San Diego County saw a 1.37 percent rate, the figures show.

The 2026 primary rejection figures are up from the 2024 primary, when 108,982 mail ballots were tossed, representing a 1.56 percent increase, according to the California Secretary of State’s office.

Kim Alexander, the head of the California Voter Foundation, told media outlets this week that ballot rejections during the primary election last month were largely due to them being mailed too late.

“Ballots rejected due to lateness are caused primarily to being postmarked too late to count, not because they arrived too late to count,” Alexander told The Associated Press.

Following last month’s primary, President Donald Trump criticized California’s election system. At one point, he questioned results showing Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt falling to third place behind two Democrats.

“Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had,” Trump wrote on social media at the time. “Rigged Elections!”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office has sought to counter claims made by Trump that elections are being mismanaged in the state, including a post issued on X last week.

“California law is clear: You MUST be a U.S. citizen to vote state and federal elections,” the post said. “Voter fraud is EXTREMELY RARE – and almost always committed by U.S. citizens.”

Newsom added that the Trump administration has “provided NO evidence to support” recent claims of non-citizens being registered to vote in California. It came as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said on July 17 that around 250,000 non-citizens were registered in New Jersey, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and California.

The Trump administration has sought to tighten rules around mail-in ballots, issuing an executive order that would create a voter list regarding who could get a mail-in ballot during elections that was blocked by a judge in late June. Trump has long said, especially in the lead-up to and after the 2020 election, that voting by mail leads to fraud and irregularities.

On Thursday, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers called on the U.S. Postal Service to address delays in the state in April.

“Hundreds of absentee ballots received by the Postal Service before Wisconsin’s Spring Election were delivered after Election Day, preventing them from being counted,” the two Democrats wrote to U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner.

The California Secretary of State’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.

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Far-Left Activist First Circuit Judges Block Trump’s Historic Election Integrity Executive Order in 23 Blue States — Protecting Mail-In Ballot Chaos Ahead of 2026 Midterms

A Biden-appointed majority on the First Circuit Court of Appeals handed President Donald Trump a major setback Saturday, refusing to lift an injunction blocking key election-integrity provisions of his executive order in 23 states and the District of Columbia.

The three-judge panel denied emergency stay requests filed by the Trump administration and 12 Republican-led states, leaving in place a lower-court order that prevents the Department of Homeland Security from distributing federal citizenship lists and blocks the U.S. Postal Service from applying new mail-ballot requirements in the plaintiff states for elections held on or before November 3, 2026.

Judges Gustavo Gelpí and Julie Rikelman, both appointed to the First Circuit by Joe Biden, formed the majority.

Trump-appointed Judge Joshua Dunlap concurred in part and dissented in part, arguing that the states lacked standing to block DHS from merely providing citizenship information.

The ruling is not a final decision on the administration’s appeal. Instead, the 20-page court order denies the administration’s request to suspend the injunction while the appeal proceeds.

The administration could now seek emergency relief from the U.S. Supreme Court.

President Trump issued Executive Order 14399, titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” on March 31 to enforce existing federal law that reserves federal elections exclusively for U.S. citizens and to bring basic accountability to the chaotic, fraud-prone mail-in ballot process.

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How non-citizens are getting voter registration forms across the US — and how Republicans are trying to stop it

Welfare offices and other agencies in at least 46 US states are providing voter registration forms to migrants without requiring proof of citizenship, leading Republicans and conservatives to call for swift federal action to stop the handouts.

Every state but North Dakota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Wyoming gives applicants for either welfare benefits, driver’s licenses, or in some cases, mail-in ballots federal voter registration forms without demanding proof of citizenship.

There is currently no requirement on federal voting forms to provide proof of US citizenship, though it is illegal to falsely claim one is a citizen or for a non-citizen to cast a ballot in a federal election.

But millions of migrants with humanitarian parole, refugee or asylum status are eligible for benefits that would bring them to the offices where voter registration takes place.

The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 ordered states to register voters at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and agencies where Americans apply for public benefits — and those offices are required by federal law to hand over the registration forms along with the application papers.

If an applicant attests that they are a US citizen, that is considered valid on its face and the person is registered to vote — except in Virginia, Tennessee and New Mexico where they must provide a full Social Security number as well.

Arizona recently passed a law requiring proof of citizenship on state but not federal voter registration forms.

The House Administration Committee last month approved the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act to require states to receive proof of citizenship when anyone registers to vote by mail, at a DMV or a welfare agency office.

“While Biden and radical progressive Democrats give ISIS and criminals an app to literally schedule their illegal entry, Republicans must fight any chance of illegal voter registration until we can mass deport,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who introduced the measure, told The Post.

“As President Biden has welcomed millions of illegal aliens through our borders, including sophisticated criminal syndicates and foreign adversaries, it is incumbent upon Congress to implement greater enforcement measures that secure the voter registration process and ensure only American citizens decide the outcome of American elections,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a statement following its approval.

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Democrats Vote to Make South Carolina the First 2028 Primary State – And Here’s Who Will Benefit

Democrats are set to make South Carolina its first 2028 primary state.

The Democrat National Committee panel on Friday voted to make South Carolina – a state with a large black voting bloc, their first presidential primary state.

“So they will emerge as the first contest in a body of work that will have a plethora of good contests for these candidates to really vie for,” the panel said.

This is a major shift away from Iowa and Nevada – states with fewer black voters.

Recall that Joe Biden pushed for the Democrats to move its first voting state to South Carolina because that is where he made his ‘come back’ in 2020.

Joe Biden requested the change going into the 2024 election after he took a punch to the gut in Iowa and came in 5th place in the New Hampshire 2020 primaries.

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