New Jersey called it a software error. Harmeet Dhillon wants the receipts.
The Justice Department’s top civil rights official gave Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill five business days to turn over detailed records on roughly 6,600 people who were improperly added to New Jersey’s voter rolls after identifying themselves as noncitizens.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon renewed the demand Wednesday after Sherrill revealed that fewer than 400 people from the affected group later cast ballots.
“Ensuring that U.S. citizens’ votes are not illegally diluted by noncitizens’ votes is of paramount importance,” Dhillon wrote.
The DOJ is seeking names, birth dates, nationalities, addresses, voter-registration dates and precinct information for the approximately 6,600 registrations.
For those who later voted, the department also wants to know when and where their ballots were cast, along with records connected to any mail-in ballots.
The request does not itself establish that all the votes were cast illegally. Determining the voters’ eligibility at the time ballots were cast is one of the questions the DOJ says it wants the records to answer.
Dhillon also instructed New Jersey to preserve all records related to the registrations, a move signaling that the information could become part of the federal government’s ongoing litigation against the state.
The Justice Department sued New Jersey in February after state officials refused to provide a complete electronic copy of the statewide voter-registration database.
The Trump administration argues federal law gives the attorney general authority to inspect voter records and determine whether states are complying with federal list-maintenance requirements.
New Jersey has resisted handing over the full database.
The discovery of the 6,600 registrations now gives the DOJ fresh ammunition.
Sherrill attributed the registrations to a “serious software error” in the state’s motor-vehicle system between June 2023 and June 2024.
“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.
The governor said she ordered an investigation and directed officials to remove ineligible registrations after learning of the problem.
But Dhillon is not content to let the state investigate itself.
Her letter said the information is needed to assess New Jersey’s compliance with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act of 2002. She also plans to notify the federal judge overseeing the existing voter-data lawsuit.
➡ Full story here: https://t.co/Dns3QaeWiN
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) July 22, 2026
