After reports emerged Tuesday that hundreds of noncitizens illegally voted in elections and thousands more were improperly registered to vote in New Jersey, experts say that Democratic officials in the state are continuing an alarming pattern of nationwide apathy and purposeful negligence in the Democratic Party toward securing voter rolls and maintaining election integrity.

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill (D) acknowledged Tuesday that 6,600 noncitizens were improperly allowed to register to vote at Motor Vehicle Commission locations in the state. The governor further stated that “fewer than 400” of those individuals actually voted in elections.

Sherrill immediately blamed her predecessor, Democratic Governor Phil Murphy, for allowing the registrations to occur and stated that she was “appalled by the reckless failures that allowed this to happen.” She further blamed the state’s software vendor that handles the registrations, saying that she will replace the vendor and has ordered the removal of names that were improperly registered to vote.

But on Wednesday, the French technology firm IDEMIA that handled the registrations pushed back against Sherrill’s claim, stating that the supposed “glitch” that allowed the noncitizens to appear on voter rolls was not due to incorrect information. “The 6,600 records submitted to the [Motor Vehicle Commission] and Division of Elections contained correct information according to the design specifications as set out by the state,” IDEMIA spokesperson Lisa Shoemaker told the New York Post. She went on to note that “at no point was a noncitizen ever marked as a citizen in the database” and that the company “does not control or manage voter enrollment.”

Experts like J. Christian Adams, who serves as president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, say that noncitizens being included on voter rolls is a multi-state problem that has been occurring for some time because of a simple loophole that has yet to be resolved.

“When you register to vote at motor voter sites like DMV … oftentimes, people want to hurry, and they hit the screen — they hit ‘Yes,’ they hit ‘No.’ But there’s a big question. It says, ‘Are you a U.S. citizen?’ What happened in New Jersey was people were marking, ‘No, I’m not a U.S. citizen,’ but New Jersey is still putting them on the voter rolls,” he explained during “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Wednesday. “… The exact same thing happened in Pennsylvania. We uncovered this a decade ago. Pennsylvania admitted to it.”

The issue has the full attention of the Trump administration. Last week, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent a letter to the secretaries of state in four states warning them that tens of thousands of noncitizens are improperly registered on their voter rolls. “Through preliminary reviews of the four states’ records, DHS found that there may be as many as: 190,832 non-citizens registered to vote in California[;] 35,152 non-citizens registered to vote in New Jersey[;] 15,903 non-citizens registered to vote in Nevada[; and] 14,576 non-citizens registered to vote in Pennsylvania,” a press release stated. Mullin called on the secretaries to respond within two weeks to address the issue.

Despite the irrefutable data, many Democratic officials like Sherrill are insisting that illegitimate voter registrations are a minor issue that does not affect the outcome of elections. In an apparent effort to downplay the issue, she stated that the noncitizens in New Jersey were registered as Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated and were “scattered across the state.”

But as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins pointed out, “[T]here [are] at least 10 New Jersey elections that have been decided by 25 votes or fewer since June of 2023.”

“[S]ome New Jersey votes were tied,” Adams added. “The Public Interest Legal Foundation has a tied election database [with] almost 900 elections around the country that ended in a tie. So it really matters. Look, this is a retreat position that the governor is using now, because before this was discovered, it was like, ‘There’s no problem with noncitizens on the voter rolls.’ It’s what always happens here. The Left always has to keep retreating and com[ing] up with a new story. And now the new story is, ‘Oh, well, we don’t think it made a difference.’ Yeah, okay. In another era, everybody would be mad about 6,000 noncitizens on the voter rolls. They wouldn’t be making excuses, they’d be making fixes.”

Adams went on to highlight how Democratic officials in states like Pennsylvania have attempted to cover up the fact that noncitizens have been showing up on their voter rolls. “In Pennsylvania, the Public Interest Legal Foundation had to sue Pennsylvania because they admitted they had tens of thousands of noncitizens because of the same exact sort of glitch. And Pennsylvania played hide the ball. Pennsylvania didn’t want to come clean about what they did to cause the problem, what they did to fix the problem. And really, nobody has ever [been] held accountable in Harrisburg. Now it’s Trenton, now it’s New Jersey.”

Adams further argued that the ineptitude “doesn’t mean it’s a conspiracy, but it’s something we all ought to want to fix. … What’s happening instead is incompetence, glitches, stupidity, government bureaucrats, apathy.”

Still, Perkins contended that there are some on the Left who want noncitizens voting. “I think there are some places [where] there’s an incentive to do this because they can shift elections the way they want them to go.”

Adams concurred. “That’s why people like Representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland are totally proud and loud that they want noncitizens voting, so this is no longer a fringe position.”