On Tuesday, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill announced that a software error in the state’s motor vehicle system had allowed thousands of noncitizens to register to vote between June 2023 and June 2024.
Sherrill described the impact as minor, yet the state’s records now show 35,152 noncitizens registered, far exceeding the earlier estimate of 6,600.
Preliminary reviews by the Department of Homeland Security revealed similar problems in California, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, where 190,832, 15,903, and 14,576 noncitizens were registered, respectively.
The SAVE system, administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is used by 26 states to verify citizenship status during voter registration or roll maintenance. It processed 198 million cases in 2025, while 24 states have no publicly available information indicating they use the service.
New Jersey partnered with the nonprofit ERIC in August 2022 to clean its voter rolls, but the state continues to face inaccuracies stemming from its motor vehicle registration process.
Similar DMV-related registration errors have been documented in Oregon, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, Vermont, and Nevada over the past four years, each involving misclassification of citizenship status during automatic voter registration.
Automatic voter registration at motor vehicle agencies has become widespread, with many states adopting the system without robust verification, creating a risk of ineligible registrations.
Legislative proposals, including the SAVE Act, aim to strengthen verification procedures and reduce the incidence of noncitizen registrations across the country.
