The White House is having an “I told you so” moment after New Jersey‘s Democratic governor announced she was removing 6,600 noncitizens from her state’s voter roll following 400 of them casting ballots in past federal elections.
“Democrats and their media allies have repeatedly said it is impossible for noncitizens to register to vote, let alone cast a ballot,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Washington Examiner. “Time and again, they have been proven wrong. As President [Donald] Trump has said, there is nothing more important than the integrity of our elections. And this latest incident underscores the absolute necessity of the SAVE America Act.”
Jackson added that American voters “deserve to have confidence that our elections are safe and secure” and that Trump “will never stop fighting to make that happen and all patriotic Americans should join in his effort.”
Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) made the announcement on Tuesday, apportioning responsibility to “a serious software error in New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle System” between June of 2023 and June of 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 wrote in a statement. “They were registered as Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters and were scattered across the state.”
During a separate press conference, Sherrill, who told reporters she discovered the mistake last Wednesday before Trump’s primetime address on election security, contended, “We have no evidence at this time that any elections were swayed.”
During his primetime speech last Thursday, Trump announced that his White House and Department of Homeland Security had identified 278,000 noncitizens who had registered to vote in federal elections.
“Our purpose in disclosing this information is not to weaken confidence in elections, but to earn that confidence by confronting vulnerabilities and correcting them very, very quickly,” the president said at the time.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, whom Trump directed in the aftermath of his remarks to advise the states of any mistakes regarding their voter rolls, argued on Tuesday Sherrill should have taken action “a LONG time ago.”
“Just ONE illegal vote cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen,” Mullin wrote on social media. “As @DHSgov reported last week—New Jersey could have as many as 35,152 potential non-citizens registered to vote.”
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Sherrill’s announcement on Tuesday coincides with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) successfully shepherding a rule through his chamber in preparation for a possible vote on a third budget reconciliation bill, which could use a streamlined parliamentary process to pass provisions of the SAVE America Act through the Senate with only a simple majority as opposed to a filibuster-proof 60 votes.