New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s disclosure Wednesday that a software glitch caused her state to mistakenly add 6,600 non-citizens to its voter rolls — and that about 400 of them improperly voted in recent years — has given Republicans something to grab onto in their long-running campaign against non-citizen voting.
President Donald Trump and others have argued the episode proves that non-citizen voting is a problem. And they’ve sought to use it to urge Congress to pass the long-stalled “SAVE America Act,” which targets non-citizen voting, including by making registrants provide proof of citizenship.
But it’s important to delineate what the New Jersey situation does and doesn’t mean about non-citizen voting.
Let’s break it down.
First, this is one of the most significant disclosures of non-citizen registration and voting in years.
