The identity verification vendor for the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission disputed Gov. Mikie Sherrill‘s (D-NJ) claim that a “software error” caused thousands of noncitizens to be added to the state’s voter rolls, instead arguing the mistake originated with state officials.
IDEMIA, a France-based company that provides technology for issuing identity documents, managing secure payments, and facilitating trusted access and travel, said Thursday its voter registration system was working as intended and had been approved by the state before it was implemented.
The company said the problem arose when noncitizen data were sent to the Division of Elections, arguing that state officials, not IDEMIA, were ultimately responsible for validating voter eligibility.
The dispute comes after New Jersey disclosed that about 6,600 noncitizens were mistakenly registered to vote through the state’s automatic voter registration system between June 2023 and July 2024. State officials have said about 400 of those individuals ultimately cast ballots and have maintained there is no evidence the registrations affected the outcome of any election.
In a statement, IDEMIA’s senior vice president of global corporate relations, Lisa Shoemaker, said all 6,600 individuals “indicated ‘Yes’ to wanting to register to vote and ‘No’ to being a US Citizen.”
“This information was recorded correctly and always available to the MVC via the database that MVC utilized to gather voter information and transmit to the Division of Elections,” Shoemaker said. “At no point was a noncitizen ever marked as a citizen in the database.”
According to the company, MVC requested in June 2024 that the system be changed so applicants who identified themselves as noncitizens would automatically be marked as declining voter registration. IDEMIA said that modification prevented similar registrations going forward, but roughly 6,600 people added to the voter rolls before the change were not removed or publicly disclosed until recently.
On Thursday, Sherrill continued pointing the finger at IDEMIA, as well as her predecessor, former Gov. Phil Murphy, for lacking accountability and contributing to the blunder.
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“I think it’s well known that the Motor Vehicle Commission has been a mess, and IDEMIA is at the heart of that: long wait times, bureaucracy, red tape,” she said.
The Trump administration has pointed to New Jersey as evidence that additional safeguards around elections are needed, including citizenship verification. The Department of Justice sent New Jersey a letter on Tuesday ordering the state to provide the names, addresses, and nationalities of those affected within five business days. Sherrill pushed back, deepening the feud between the state and the federal government, as the governor alleged the DOJ would “weaponize” the information in the voter rolls.