New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill is openly defying a Department of Justice demand to turn over registration records for roughly 6,600 noncitizens found on the state’s voter rolls, setting up a high-stakes federal-state showdown over voter privacy and election transparency.
On Tuesday (July 21), Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, issued a strict directive giving the state just five business days to comply. Dhillon is demanding that New Jersey hand over sensitive personal details of the 6,600 individuals, including their names, birthdates, nationalities, physical addresses, and original registration dates. Furthermore, the DOJ's demand extends to specific details on when and where these individuals voted, copies of their mail-ballot certifications and signatures, and an explicit instruction for the state to preserve all related files.
Governor Sherrill disclosed the registration errors the very same day, tracing the issue back to a software glitch in the state's Motor Vehicle System. The glitch occurred between June 2023 and June 2024 under her Democratic predecessor, former Gov. Phil Murphy. According to state officials, applicants who explicitly indicated on keypads that they were not U.S. citizens while applying for driver's licenses were erroneously registered to vote anyway due to the system error.
"This failure didn't occur under my watch, but accountability starts now," Sherrill said in a statement, sharply accusing her predecessor of "reckless failures" and an absence of transparency. To address the immediate impact on past elections, the governor noted that fewer than 400 of the improperly registered noncitizens actually cast ballots, and emphasized that the state currently has "no evidence at this time that any elections were swayed."
The improper registrations were reportedly spread across party lines—including Democrats, Republicans, and a majority who registered as unaffiliated—and were scattered geographically across the state. Despite pressure, Sherrill has declined to provide specific statistical breakdowns by party affiliation.
Meanwhile, the New Jersey Division of Elections is also blocking a public records request from the conservative outlet The Federalist, which sought access to the files to independently determine the party affiliation of the registered noncitizens, particularly those who cast ballots. Alicia D'Alessandro, a senior adviser in the state Department of State's communications department, defended the decision, stating that the information would not be released to the public while an active state investigation continues. D'Alessandro could not provide a timeline for when the records might eventually become available.
The federal government's Election Assistance Commission notes on its website that voter registration forms and lists are generally considered government documents often subject to public records laws. These public lists can include registered partisan affiliation, the specific elections a voter participated in, and their method of voting—though they do not reveal who the voter actually cast a ballot for.
Despite these guidelines, Sherrill made her administration's stance clear during an interview with Democracy Docket, a media publication run by prominent Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias. Sherrill firmly stated that her administration will not hand over the sensitive database to federal investigators.
"We are not in the practice of turning over this kind of personally identifying data over to the federal government because we have seen them weaponize it, I've seen it personally,"
Sherrill warned that federal officials are actively working to weaponize the state's voter records.
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