Two House committees issued a subpoena Wednesday to New Jersey as part of an effort to get the state’s documents detailing how thousands of noncitizens ended up on its voter rolls.
The chairmen of the Judiciary and House Administration committees said they had asked the secretary of state in New Jersey, which oversees voting, to cooperate in their probe. But after 79 days, the department had sent back only cursory responses, so Congress resorted to the subpoena.
“The department’s refusal to engage with specificity has unnecessarily impeded the committees’ oversight and significantly delayed the production of responsive documents,” the chairmen wrote.
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Gov. Mikie Sherrill this summer revealed that 6,600 noncitizens had managed to get on the state’s rolls from June 2023 to June 2024.
She said they were registered when they used the motor vehicle bureau, and she blamed a software error for the issue.
She later said they had reduced the number to 4,500, and had begun to boot them from the state’s lists.
But the state has been reticent to say more about what went wrong.
The software firm, for its part, said it was a conduit for information and said it was up to the state to validate the voter registrations.
The Washington Times has sought comment from the New Jersey State Department for this story.
The House committees said New Jersey did provide some responses to its inquiries, though they were either information that was already public, some bookkeeping matters, or brief summations of the issue.
None addressed how the problem was discovered or how it lingered for two years after Ms. Sherrill said it was shut down, the Republican chairmen said.
The Times, through a state Open Public Records Act request, asked the governor’s office for any documents referring to noncitizens and the motor vehicle bureau.
The governor’s deputy chief counsel, in a September response, said “no responsive records were located.”
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