by Steven Richards
The New Jersey governor’s claim that a glitch resulted in the registration of 6,600 noncitizen voters in the state was disputed by the software vendor running the program.
The two House committees probing how 6,600 non-citizens ended up on New Jersey voter rolls asked the software vendor that administers the state’s system on Tuesday to turn over all documents and communications related to the alleged software errors that allowed ineligible voters to be registered.
Republican leadership of the House Administration and Judiciary Committees conveyed their demands to the software company IDEMIA North America on Tuesday, according to a letter Just the News reviewed.
The lawmakers also sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon asking the Justice Department to investigate whether New Jersey is fully complying with federal laws, especially the Civil Rights Act.
The request for materials comes amid a dispute between New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherill, a Democrat, and the software vendor, IDEMIA, over whether a software glitch caused the registration errors at the Motor Vehicle Commission (MVC). IDEMIA North America is a branch of IDEMIA, a France-based company.
Last month, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill claimed that such a software glitch resulted in the state’s motor vehicle system accidentally registering 6,600 non-citizens to vote. She also acknowledged that the error allowed at least 400 of those individuals to vote in recent elections.
However, the software vendor for the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, IDEMIA, issued a statement disputing those claims, saying it was the responsibility of the state government to verify eligibility to vote, Just the News first reported last month.
In fact, according to subsequent reporting, the Motor Vehicle Commission had identified the issue in June 2024 and requested at the time that the software vendor change its settings so that those who said they were non-citizens would not have the option to register to vote.
“Based on this information, the Committees are concerned about the application of federal law in New Jersey as it pertains to accurate voter registration, as well as the effect that New Jersey’s failure to identify and remove noncitizens from its voter rolls has on the civil liberties of American voters and their ability to elect their representatives,” House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Rep. Laurel Lee and Rep. Jeff Van Drew wrote in the letter.
“As the vendor that provided the software that allegedly made an error, IDEMIA has relevant information regarding the nature of the supposed error, the information collected by your software that New Jersey had in its possession, and how IDEMIA communicated with New Jersey state authorities about fixing the error,” they added.
You can read the letters to IDEMIA and the Justice Department below:
The lawmakers asked IDEMIA to turn over all documents and communications related to the alleged software errors resulting in the illegal registrations, including how the errors were discovered. Additionally, they asked the company for its communications with the state of New Jersey regarding the collection of voter information and about how the errors were identified and corrected.
The House committees also sent a letter to New Jersey’s chief elections official, Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell, last week seeking information about the “alleged software errors,” Just the News reported.
“Thousands of noncitizens registering to vote in New Jersey is not a minor mistake. It is a massive breakdown of the safeguards that are supposed to protect our elections,” Rep. Van Drew told Just the News in a statement.
“If people who openly identified themselves as noncitizens were still able to register to vote, then we have every right to ask how many others slipped through the cracks. That is why this is now a coordinated effort between Congress and the Department of Justice to get to the bottom of exactly what happened," he said.
"We are asking the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to brief the Committee on its findings, and New Jersey cannot run away from the questions that Congress and the Administration are asking," Van Drew went on. "The people of New Jersey deserve answers, accountability, and immediate action. The right to vote belongs to American citizens, and we will not apologize for demanding a system that verifies that basic requirement."
Steven Richards
Source: https://justthenews.com/government/congress/exclusive-lawmakers-demand-records-software-vendor-over-foreign-voter
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