New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said Tuesday that her administration will not comply with a Justice Department demand seeking personal details on 6,600 non-citizens who were mistakenly added to the Garden State’s voter registration rolls.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, had asked New Jersey to turn over the individuals’ names, dates of birth, addresses, nationalities and voter registration dates. The July 21 request also noted that roughly 400 of the non-citizens are believed to have voted, and it gave the Democratic governor five days to provide the information.
“Today, I informed [Dhillon] that New Jersey will not provide the personal information of thousands of New Jersey residents,” Sherrill wrote on X. “The request had no legal basis, and I will always protect New Jerseyans’ personally identifiable information.”
Sherrill shared a letter sent to the DOJ official, saying the non-citizens were registered to vote “through no fault of their own.” She added that state and local election officials were “working tirelessly … to rectify this error.”
Dhillon pushed back, arguing that Sherrill’s “refusal to cooperate with federal law enforcement does nothing to protect law-abiding NJ voters.”
“NJ has a legal duty to keep ineligible voters off its rolls, & our request is grounded in that legal authority,” Dhillon wrote on X. “DOJ will get this information through all legal means!”
In the Justice Department’s original demand, Dhillon said federal officials would examine the voter registration error as a potential “unlawful dilution of American votes.”
The DOJ has also pointed to the controversy in its continuing lawsuit against New Jersey, which seeks access to the state’s voter roll data.
Last week, Sherrill blamed a “serious software error” in the state’s Motor Vehicle System involving French tech company IDEMIA for the mishap.
The software company, however, argues that the state’s department of elections is “ultimately responsible for verifying eligibility to vote.”
Sherrilll has also faced criticism for slamming President Trump’s July 16 comments about election integrity even though she may have already known about the major voter registration problem in her state.
Following Trump’s address, Sherrill signed on to a statement with 23 other Democratic governors calling Trump’s comments about non-citizens being registered to vote and Chinese efforts to interfere in US elections “deeply alarming” and an attempt by the president to “undermine free and fair elections”
Sherrill’s co-signed statement went on to accuse Trump of trying to “intimidate and silence voters” while claiming Democrats are the ones “actually making life better for American families by lowering costs, creating jobs and protecting our freedoms.”
Dhillon claims Sherrill already “knew” thousands of non-citizens were registered to vote in New Jersey but “still went online and called the president a liar and said he was exaggerating.
“Shame on you, governor,” the DOJ official added.
