On July 21, 2026, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill announced that a software error in the state’s motor vehicle system had accidentally registered approximately 6,600 noncitizens to vote between June 2023 and June 2024. Sherrill said the state had identified the error, removed all 6,600 individuals from the voter rolls, and determined that roughly 400 of them had cast ballots. A preliminary review found that those votes did not affect the outcome of any election. Within days, the Department of Justice, led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, gave New Jersey five business days to hand over the full names, dates of birth, nationalities, home addresses, and registration details of all 6,600 individuals — along with detailed voting records, including when and where the approximately 400 voters had voted and any mail-in certifications or signatures. The DOJ also used the disclosure as what it called an additional basis to renew its existing demand for New Jersey’s complete, unredacted statewide voter database. The DOJ has sued approximately 30 states and the District of Columbia seeking similar voter data. Federal courts have dismissed five of those lawsuits, with at least two courts ruling that the DOJ’s demands exceed its legal authority and violate federal and state privacy laws.
How the Error Happened
New Jersey uses a system called automatic voter registration, in which residents who interact with state agencies — primarily the Motor Vehicle Commission — are automatically registered to vote unless they opt out. The system is intended to expand voter access by registering eligible residents during routine transactions such as driver’s license applications or renewals. The software error involved the motor vehicle system operated by IDEMIA, a French company that provides identity verification and licensing technology to government agencies in multiple states. According to Governor Sherrill, the error caused the system to improperly transmit registration data for noncitizens — individuals who had identified themselves as noncitizens during their motor vehicle transaction — to the state Division of Elections, where they were added to the voter rolls. The registrations occurred between June 2023 and June 2024. IDEMIA disputed the characterization. In a public statement, the company said the responsibility for verifying voter eligibility lies with the state’s Division of Elections, not with IDEMIA, and suggested that state officials had access to information about the noncitizen status of the individuals involved. The state has not publicly confirmed or disputed IDEMIA’s account of what data was available to election officials during the period in question.
What New Jersey Did
Governor Sherrill, a Democrat, disclosed the error publicly in a press statement on July 21, 2026. She said the state had conducted a review, identified all individuals affected, and removed them from the voter rolls. She acknowledged that approximately 400 of the 6,600 individuals had voted in elections between 2023 and 2024, and said a preliminary review had found no evidence that those votes changed the outcome of any election. Sherrill framed the disclosure as an example of the state’s commitment to election integrity — identifying an error, correcting it, and reporting it to the public. New Jersey already faces a broader ongoing dispute with the DOJ over voter data: the Justice Department had previously sued New Jersey seeking access to its statewide voter registration database, a case that was already pending in federal court when the software error was disclosed. The new disclosure became the basis for the DOJ to escalate that existing demand.
What the DOJ Demanded
Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, sent a letter to Governor Sherrill giving the state five business days to comply with the following: the full names, dates of birth, nationalities, and addresses of all approximately 6,600 individuals who were improperly registered; their voter registration application details; and, for the approximately 400 who voted, records specifying when and where they voted and any mail-in ballot certifications or signatures. Dhillon’s letter also stated that the disclosure would be treated as an additional basis for the DOJ’s already-pending demand for New Jersey’s entire unredacted statewide voter database — a database that contains private information on every registered voter in the state. The DOJ notified the federal judge presiding over its existing New Jersey voter data lawsuit of the new development. The five-day deadline would fall on or around July 28, 2026.
Who Harmeet Dhillon Is
Harmeet Dhillon was confirmed as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in March 2025. The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice was created in 1957 to enforce federal civil rights laws, including the Voting Rights Act, anti-discrimination statutes, and protections against police misconduct. Under Dhillon’s leadership, the division has shifted its focus significantly, directing its resources primarily toward investigating alleged voter fraud, noncitizen voting, and state compliance with federal voter roll maintenance requirements. Dhillon was previously a Republican Party attorney who represented clients including the Republican National Committee in election-related litigation. Before her appointment, she was a conservative commentator who appeared frequently on Fox News.
The DOJ’s Broader Voter Database Campaign
The demand from New Jersey is part of a broader DOJ campaign to obtain private voter registration data from states across the country. The department has sued approximately 30 states and the District of Columbia, demanding access to unredacted voter rolls that include sensitive personal information about registered voters. The DOJ has argued that it needs this data to enforce the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 federal law that requires states to maintain accurate voter rolls and share certain data with federal officials. States and voting rights advocates have argued that the DOJ’s demands go far beyond what the law actually requires and would expose millions of voters’ private information — including home addresses, dates of birth, and other identifying details — to a federal database with no clear legal authorization. Federal courts have sided with the states in five of the cases decided so far: judges in Michigan, Oregon, California, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island have dismissed the DOJ’s lawsuits. At least two of those dismissals explicitly found that the DOJ’s data demands exceed its statutory authority under the National Voter Registration Act and violate state and federal privacy laws. The DOJ is appealing some of those decisions. The New Jersey case, which now includes the software error disclosure as an additional basis for the demand, was pending in federal court as of publication.
The Election Overhaul Context
The DOJ’s voter data campaign is one component of a broader set of federal election policy changes the Trump administration has pursued since January 2025. Congress passed and Trump signed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, known as the SAVE Act, as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill in July 2025. The SAVE Act requires voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship before registering to vote. Voting rights advocates have argued that documentary proof of citizenship requirements create barriers to registration for eligible citizens who do not have easy access to passports or birth certificates, and that noncitizen voting — while illegal — is already extremely rare in the United States. The New Jersey incident, in which the registrations resulted from a software error rather than from noncitizens attempting to register, fits that pattern: the noncitizens did not seek to register to vote and in many cases may not have known they had been registered. The DOJ’s use of the disclosure to justify a demand for the state’s entire private voter database represents an escalation of the broader federal effort to obtain and consolidate state voter registration records.