Republicans Can't Win a Fair Fight, So They're Manufacturing a Bullshit Scandal Out of a Software Glitch
A software glitch at New Jersey's motor vehicle agency mistakenly registered 6,600 people who told the state they weren't citizens — a bug the state caught, disclosed, and is fixing. Trump's DOJ is treating it as proof of mass fraud it has never found.
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WASHINGTON, DC — A software glitch at New Jersey's motor vehicle agency mistakenly registered 6,600 people who told the state they weren't citizens — a bug the state caught, disclosed, and is fixing. That hasn't stopped Donald Trump's DOJ and Republican allies from treating it as proof of the mass noncitizen voting fraud they've spent years alleging without ever finding it. It's the same play they always run: manufacture a crisis, then demand the power to rig the next election in their favor in the name of stopping it.
“Nobody should be shocked that the same people who incited an insurrection to overturn an election they lost are milking a software glitch to sow distrust and confuse voters,” said Abhi Rahman, chief spokesperson for Try and Stop Us. “Donald Trump and Republicans' ‘election integrity' con is nothing more than an excuse to rig the game this November because they know they can't win a fair fight. New Jersey caught the error, fixed it, and fewer than 400 votes out of millions were affected. Voters shouldn't buy the spin for a second. Republicans are desperate and full of shit, same as they've always been.”
The Facts
It was a software failure, not a fraud scheme.
The 6,600 people told the DMV that they were not citizens when applying for a license or ID. New Jersey's software registered them to vote anyway. No one is accused of lying to get on the rolls. Gov. Sherrill ordered the erroneous registrations removed and launched an investigation, and the state is replacing the responsible vendor.
Fewer than 400 non-citizens actually voted.
New Jersey says the erroneous registrations led to fewer than 400 non-citizens voting across several state and local elections since 2023. For scale: New Jersey has over 6 million registered voters. In the 2024 general election alone, more than 4.3 million New Jerseyans cast ballots. The erroneous non-citizen votes represent a tiny fraction of a percent of all votes cast in New Jersey, and there's no suggestion that the outcome of any race could possibly have been impacted by such votes.
This isn't new or unique to New Jersey.
Oregon found a similar administrative error affecting 1,200+ registrants in 2024. California found roughly 1,500 in 2018. Experts say these errors are rare but not unheard of — and states, not the federal government, are best positioned to catch them.
Noncitizen voting remains vanishingly rare nationally.
A Reuters review found just 129 federal prosecutions for noncitizen voting since 1996 — with 73 convictions or guilty pleas.
What Experts Are Saying
David Becker, Executive Director, Center for Election Innovation & Research: “While administrative errors such as New Jersey's do infrequently occur, they are very rare and affect a very small fraction of voters. The states entrusted to run our elections are best positioned to detect and correct these errors, as they have access to substantially better data than the federal government.”
Stephen Richer, former Maricopa County (AZ) Recorder: “This is NOT a successful attempt by noncitizens to get around the system's controls… This isn't a data point that there's a large number of noncitizens itching to register, and they were able to do so. Rather, this was a system failure.”
Democracy Docket: “Nothing disclosed so far shows an organized voter fraud scheme or an altered election. But, surprising no one, Republicans and Trump officials jumped on the error to demand passage of the SAVE America Act, their sweeping voter suppression legislation.”
Lauren Kunis, Executive Director, VoteRiders: “These lawmakers are ignoring the dire consequences of these laws on eligible U.S. citizens, who will dramatically and disproportionately bear the brunt of these restrictions relative to the exceedingly rare and almost-always accidental cases of noncitizen voting that are cited to justify their passage.”
About Try and Stop Us
Try and Stop Us is an organization fighting to defend free and fair elections in 2026 and beyond. As Donald Trump and his allies work to rig the game and sow distrust in our elections because they can't win a fair fight, Try and Stop Us moves quickly to amplify the work of organizers and local leaders — helping their voices reach further, faster, as one unified story.
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Republicans Can’t Win a Fair Fight, So They’re Manufacturing a Bullshit Scandal Out of a Software Glitch
A software glitch mistakenly registered 6,600 New Jersey residents who told the state they weren’t citizens. Fewer than 400 non-citizens actually voted — but Trump’s DOJ and allies are treating it as proof of the mass fraud they’ve never found.
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