Two House committees say New Jersey stonewalled them for 79 days over how thousands of noncitizens ended up on the state's voter rolls — so on Wednesday, they stopped asking and issued a subpoena.
🚨 House Republicans are turning up the pressure on New Jersey, issuing a subpoena amid questions surrounding approximately 6,600 noncitizens reportedly registered to vote.
The move follows a DHS announcement about the arrest of a Dominican national in New Jersey accused of illegally voting. Lawmakers are also investigating reports that a Motor Vehicle Commission system glitch registered some individuals who had reportedly answered "NO" when asked whether they were U.S. citizens.
Republicans say New Jersey has provided just 12 documents after 79 days of requests, prompting accusations of stonewalling and demands for the state's voter registration records.
If eligible-voter safeguards failed and noncitizens were improperly registered or cast ballots, the public deserves answers. Election integrity demands transparency, accountability, and a thorough investigation. 🇺🇸
The subpoena, signed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, was served on New Jersey's Acting Secretary of State Shirley Emehelu on Wednesday, October 21. Joining Jordan were House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, and Rep. Laurel Lee of Florida, who chairs the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections. The two committees first requested the records on August 3, and the subpoena gives Emehelu until November 16 to deliver them to the Judiciary Committee's offices in Washington. In their letter, the lawmakers said the Department of State "has not produced any documents that explain how the alleged software error resulting in the registration of noncitizens was discovered or why noncitizens remained on the voter rolls until 2026" — the two questions the committees say they asked first.
"Election integrity demands transparency, accountability, and a thorough investigation."
The registrations trace back to the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. From June 2023 through June 2024, a software error at the MVC registered people to vote even though they had answered "no" when asked whether they were U.S. citizens. The glitch itself was fixed in June 2024, but the registrations it created stayed on the voter rolls for roughly two more years, until Gov. Mikie Sherrill's administration publicly disclosed the problem in July 2026 and began correcting it. State officials have since deleted about 5,100 of the registrations, flagged another 1,450 for county review, and found that roughly 340 people registered through the glitch had cast ballots. IDEMIA, the contractor behind the MVC's voter registration software, has disputed responsibility for the malfunction, maintaining that its system accurately recorded applicants' responses.
The paper trail is what turned an inquiry into a subpoena. According to the committees' October 21 letter, the state produced four documents on August 28 — two of them already public — five more on September 11, and three emails from IDEMIA on September 18, twelve documents in all across 79 days. When the state's lawyers raised attorney-client, work-product, executive and deliberative-process privileges in late September and early October, the committees say the state never identified which documents were withheld or how the privileges applied. "Without additional details, it strains credulity to believe that every document responsive to the Committees' request that has not been produced is privileged or that the privileges are being appropriately invoked," the lawmakers wrote. The subpoena reaches well beyond the glitch itself, covering eight areas that include New Jersey's compliance with the Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the safeguards meant to keep noncitizens off the rolls, the state's limited cooperation with the federal SAVE citizenship-verification database, and its communications with the software vendor. It compels documents, not testimony.
Van Drew, the New Jersey Republican on the subpoena, said the committees had "given Governor Sherrill's administration every opportunity to provide answers, and they have failed to do so." "Thousands of people told the state they were not American citizens, yet they were registered to vote anyway. Hundreds actually voted," he said. "If it was simply a software glitch, then show us the evidence. Who knew about it? Why wasn't it fixed sooner?"
Sherrill's side tells a different story, and she gave it herself on Wednesday. The governor, who inherited the registration problem from the previous administration of Gov. Phil Murphy, says her administration discovered the error, disclosed it publicly, and moved immediately to fix it — ordering an investigation, removing the improper registrations, and appointing former Republican U.S. Senator and New Jersey Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa to lead an independent review. On October 7 her administration announced that a broader review had found about 1,090 additional registration records needing correction or investigation, and rolled out new safeguards including daily audits comparing MVC responses against registration data and a plan to replace IDEMIA as the agency's vendor. "From the moment we discovered the MVC registration issue from 2023, we took action immediately, went above and beyond in making agency-wide reforms, and have been transparent every step of the way," Sherrill said, calling the subpoena "political theater" thirteen days before the midterm elections and contrasting her administration with "Trump and his enablers, like Jeff Van Drew and Jim Jordan."
The records are due November 16 — nearly two weeks after the November 3 midterms that will decide control of Congress — so the subpoena will not settle the argument before voters do. What it does settle is that the questions are no longer optional. New Jersey told Congress almost nothing for 79 days; it now has a legal deadline, a demand to account for every withheld document, and a paper trail that starts with a simple fact nobody disputes: thousands of people who said they were not citizens were registered to vote anyway, and hundreds of them voted.