Republican lawmakers in New Jersey say the state's automatic voter registration scandal runs far deeper than one software glitch, and they want subpoena power to prove it.
State Sen. Kristin Corrado, the top Republican on New Jersey's Judiciary Committee, told Fox News Digital that she and her colleagues spent years pressing state officials about weak safeguards in the Motor Vehicle Commission's automatic voter registration system, and got nowhere. Now, with reports that roughly 75,000 noncitizens per year have been summoned for jury duty through the same state databases, she and Senate Minority Leader Anthony Bucco are demanding a bipartisan legislative investigation with the authority to compel testimony and documents.
The jury figure alone should stop anyone from dismissing the problem as a minor clerical error. Peter McAleer, a spokesman for New Jersey's state court system, confirmed the number directly: approximately 75,000 individuals per year are disqualified from juror service "based solely on lack of United States citizenship." The court system draws its jury pools from three sources, the Motor Vehicle Commission, the state Department of Taxation, and the elections department. McAleer noted that prospective jurors must complete a mandatory qualification questionnaire certifying their citizenship, and that submitting a knowingly false answer can result in contempt-of-court punishment.
But the presence of that many noncitizens across state databases raises an obvious question: if they are in the jury system, how confident can anyone be that they are not also on the voter rolls?
Corrado described a pattern of evasion from the officials who ran the system under former Gov. Phil Murphy. She said she reached out not only to the Motor Vehicle Commissioner but also to then-Secretary of State Taheshia Way, who also served as lieutenant governor. The answers she received amounted to little more than reassurance that signs were posted at MVC offices telling noncitizens they could not register to vote.
"We reached out to secretary of state [at the time, Lt. Gov. Taheshia Way]. We were not satisfied with the answers that we got from the motor vehicle commissioner, which I can tell you were basically, 'we have signs up, they're put on notice... that if you're not a citizen, you can't register to vote'."
Corrado called that arrangement exactly what it was.
"So people were on the honor system. We did not think that was acceptable or satisfactory or enough of a safeguard."
Signs and good intentions are not safeguards. They are decorations. A state that processes millions of motor vehicle transactions per year and feeds that data directly into voter registration rolls needs a verification mechanism, not a placard.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill has launched an internal investigation, but Corrado and her Republican colleagues say it is far too limited. Corrado told Fox News Digital that the probe covers only what officials are calling the motor vehicle "glitch", a framing that, to her, understates the scale of the problem.
"I have concerns about that because this independent investigation is very limited in scope. It is limited to what they're calling the motor vehicle 'glitch'."
Senate President Nicholas Scutari, the chamber's top Democrat, signaled he would wait for Sherrill's investigation to finish before considering legislative action. He credited the governor for transparency and said public trust depends on the security of voter registration systems. But waiting for an executive-branch probe to wrap up is a convenient way to avoid the harder work of an independent legislative inquiry, one that could follow the data wherever it leads, including into decisions made by officials in his own party.
Scutari framed his patience as responsible governance:
"A healthy democracy depends on the security of our voter registration systems and the stewardship of the individuals entrusted with ensuring our elections are free, fair, and accessible. It also depends on public trust, and Governor Sherrill deserves credit for being transparent about these failures... [and] launch[ing] an independent investigation..."
Transparency is a fine word. Subpoena power is a better tool.
State Sen. Declan O'Scanlon, the ranking Republican on the Joint Budget Committee, went into detail about how his party's warnings were received for years. He said officials in charge insisted that noncitizen voter registration was impossible and that anyone raising the issue was trafficking in conspiracy theories.
"The fact is that the people in charge for so long said this absolutely was impossible; Republicans were 'conspiracy theorists'."
O'Scanlon described the vindication in blunt terms:
"There are some folks on the extreme on both sides, but those of us in the middle who have said there are real issues here, and they were ignored, and we were accused of being conspiracy theorists, only to find out that we were absolutely right; again."
Hours after O'Scanlon called the motor voter revelations the "tip of the iceberg," reports about the 75,000 noncitizen jury summonses surfaced, reinforcing his point that the problem extends well beyond a single database error at the MVC. He warned that upcoming elections could hinge on slim margins and that voters need to trust the integrity of the rolls.
"We need to get on this quickly because we have elections coming up that are critical, that could be slim margins. And also you want the people of New Jersey to believe in the [integrity of their voter rolls] and their elections."
O'Scanlon added a line that could serve as the motto for the entire mess:
"We shouldn't dig this hole any deeper."
State Sen. Joe Pennacchio went further than his colleagues, calling on U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche to take charge. In a statement issued Monday, Pennacchio said the 75,000 noncitizen jury summonses demanded a thorough federal investigation, not another state-run review.
"The disclosure that 75,000 noncitizens were summoned as potential members of juries screams for a thorough federal investigation."
Pennacchio also took aim at Sherrill's shifting explanations for the growing numbers. He said the governor had blamed the French software firm IDEMIA, the Murphy administration, and President Donald Trump, a widening circle of blame that, in his view, only underscored the need for an outside authority to step in.
"The governor has blamed IDEMIA, the Murphy administration and, of course, President Donald Trump for their ever-increasing numbers."
"As the scope of this problem grows daily and with the refusal of the Democratic Legislature to investigate, it is obvious the U.S. Attorney General's office must take charge."
Former Gov. Murphy's spokesman, Mahen Gunaratna, told Fox News last week that Murphy had "no knowledge" of the issues at the MVC. Corrado found that claim difficult to accept.
"I find that hard to believe, but it's incredibly troubling that the governor did not know what his cabinet members were doing or what was going on right underneath him."
Either Murphy knew and did nothing, or his administration was so poorly managed that a systemic vulnerability in the state's voter registration apparatus escaped his notice entirely. Neither explanation inspires confidence.
Beyond the call for a legislative investigation, Corrado and Bucco introduced a bill that would eliminate automatic voter registration through the MVC, implement voter identification requirements, and mandate regular audits of election data systems. The bill number has not been publicly reported.
Bucco framed the legislation as a matter of common sense, not partisanship:
"New Jerseyans need more than just excuses and finger pointing, they deserve action, and there are commonsense steps we can take right now."
He boiled the first step down to a single directive:
"Get the MVC out of the voter registration business."
The taxation department, which also feeds data into the jury system, is legally permitted to have noncitizens on its rolls, it tracks tax obligations, not citizenship. That is unremarkable on its own. What is remarkable is that a system designed to track tax payments and a system designed to register voters were allowed to share a pipeline with no meaningful filter to keep noncitizens off the election rolls.
Corrado laid out the stakes plainly:
"All [this] put our election integrity at risk, all questions that have to be answered. And the only way to answer those questions is through a bipartisan, legislative committee."
Several critical gaps remain. The exact number of noncitizens who ended up on voter rolls, as distinct from the 75,000 annual jury disqualification figure, has not been publicly confirmed. The full scope of Sherrill's internal investigation, including which agencies and time periods it covers, is unclear. Whether the U.S. Attorney General's office has acted on Pennacchio's request is unknown. And the precise nature of the so-called MVC "glitch", whether it was a one-time software error or a structural flaw baked into the system from the start, has not been explained to the public's satisfaction.
Fox News Digital reached out to Sherrill's office for comment. No response was reported.
New Jersey's Democratic leadership has two choices: open a real investigation with real authority, or keep waiting for a limited executive probe to deliver a limited answer. One path leads to accountability. The other leads to the conclusion that the people running the system would rather not know what it produced.
When 75,000 noncitizens a year show up in your jury pool and the best defense your state can offer is a posted sign at the DMV, the system did not glitch, it performed exactly as it was built.
