New Jersey’s own audit found thousands of noncitizens on voter rolls and hundreds who voted, California’s slow counting and permissive ballot practices raise transparency concerns, and national data breaches show foreign actors already possess vast personal records that could be matched to voter files.
On Tuesday, New Jersey’s governor acknowledged the state had about 6,600 noncitizens registered to vote after a Motor Vehicle Commission software error ran from June 2023 to June 2024, and that roughly 400 of them cast ballots. She called it “unacceptable.” That admission came from a Democrat running a Democratic state using the state’s own records, which makes it harder to shrug off as partisan fearmongering.
For years, many Democratic officials dismissed noncitizen registration as a myth, saying numbers were made up and people checking the rolls were intimidating voters. The federal Department of Homeland Security recently claimed more than 250,000 noncitizens were registered across four states, New Jersey among them, and Democrats called that count “wildly speculative.” New Jersey did not rely on Washington’s data; it audited its own rolls and confirmed thousands registered and hundreds voting in a single twelve-month window.
Homeland Security estimated the state’s total at 35,152 while New Jersey confirmed at least 6,600 from the software glitch alone. That gap matters because the state that could look harder refuses to do a full audit, so the full scope remains unknown. The instant the problem was undeniable, the defense shifted to downplaying the number who voted, blaming a vendor, and insisting no election result changed.
The refusal to check further is the real issue. If an audit can find thousands in one narrow slice of time, it is reckless to claim the problem does not exist without a full accounting. When the party that labeled this a myth is the one blocking further checks, the public is left trusting assurances instead of data.
California runs a different risk around transparency. The state mails ballots to every registered voter, more than 20 million people, accepts ballots that arrive within seven days postmarked on time, and used to count for 30 days before a 2025 law trimmed that to 13 days. Assemblyman Marc Berman called fraud claims about the count “a lie.” Yet counting for weeks is a deliberate policy choice that leaves many races uncalled for days or weeks and fuels suspicion among voters who want quicker, clearer results.
Florida chose a different path after 2000, and now reports more than nine in ten of its votes by the night the polls close. California keeps an all-mail system that takes ballots after Election Day and admits “things are a little slower.” That trade-off between inclusivity and timeliness is valid, but defenders cannot demand trust while resisting audits and transparency that would answer well-founded questions.
Ballot collection rules amplify the problem. In states including California and Washington, D.C., and more than two dozen others, any person can collect and deliver someone else’s completed ballot, with no neutral witness to confirm the voter’s freedom from coercion. Critics point out that no proof exists showing harvesting flipped a race, and defenders stretch that into “harvesting is a myth,” even though the safeguard against coercion has been removed where counting is slowest.
Beyond procedure, national security risks make the issue larger. The Justice Department indicted four Chinese military officers for stealing names and Social Security numbers of nearly 150 million Americans from Equifax. The government counted 21.5 million people in the clearance breach and noted the Anthem theft exposed records on more than 78 million people. Declassified material also alleges China acquired more than 200 million American voter registration files.
The Justice Department’s own rule names what governments do with stolen personal data: “blackmail, espionage, and intimidating activists, academics, political figures, and journalists.” A voter file supplies a map of who votes, where they live, and party affiliation, all of which can be matched against swaths of already stolen personal records. No machine needs to be hacked for that to be a problem.
The political fight is now over whether we will count and measure the risks. The Justice Department sought voter lists from nearly every state to check for noncitizens, and many blue states refused or fought the requests. Courts intervened, and a judge blocked a rule requiring proof of citizenship on federal voter forms, ruling the president cannot rewrite election procedures unilaterally. Treating occasional, fixable errors as an iron wall against checks protects mistakes and mischief alike.
New Jersey’s count happened where Democrats run the government and used the state’s own records, not an outside adversary. A Democrat counted the 6,600 her party called imaginary, and that should change how voters think about both audits and trust. If the political reaction is to deny and obstruct rather than investigate and fix, the safeguard one person, one vote promises will erode.
