Documents obtained through public records requests show that noncitizens in New Jersey sat on voter rolls for years, and that some cast ballots in multiple elections, raising fresh questions about how a state run entirely by Democrats allowed ineligible registrants to slip through and stay on the books.
The New Jersey Republican Party and the Republican National Committee requested voter rolls from all 21 counties in the state. What came back, as Fox News Digital first reported, were records showing multiple noncitizens, many of them pursuing naturalization, who asked to be removed from the rolls, claiming they never knew how they got registered in the first place.
In Atlantic County alone, Fox News Digital reviewed more than 50 documents from noncitizens attesting they had been registered to vote without their knowledge. Most of the noncitizens were registered as Democrats. And while most letters confirmed the individuals had no voting history, not all did.
The documents paint a picture that goes beyond clerical mix-ups. One noncitizen, who Atlantic County said was removed from the rolls in 2015, voted several times in 2000 and 2001 and again in the 2008 general election. Another noncitizen voted in a 2005 primary election and a 2000 municipal election.
Noncitizens cannot legally vote in state or federal elections. Yet these individuals apparently did so, repeatedly, before anyone caught the problem.
Official letters from Atlantic County Superintendent of Elections and Commissioner of Registration Maureen Bugdon, viewed by Fox News Digital, certified that noncitizens came to her office asking to be taken off the rolls. One letter stated:
"Please allow this letter to confirm that on today's date, the below referenced individual came before this office to confirm her registration and voter status. She relayed that she did not wish to be a New Jersey registered voter and does not understand how she became registered through the Department of Motor Vehicles, allegedly."
That word, "allegedly", hangs in the air. The county official couldn't even say for certain how the registration happened. Meanwhile, the vast majority of noncitizens who filed state voter registration cancellation forms checked a box labeled "other" and wrote that they were not citizens when explaining why they wanted off the rolls.
These weren't people trying to game the system. They were noncitizens worried that being on voter rolls would jeopardize their path to citizenship. The fact that they had to come forward themselves, rather than being caught by any state safeguard, tells you everything about how New Jersey's system works, or doesn't.
RNC Chairman Joe Gruters framed the findings as a direct rebuttal to Democrats who have long dismissed noncitizen voting as a non-issue. The problem, as Gruters sees it, extends well beyond New Jersey, and the party is gearing up accordingly.
"I mean, it's really incredible because here the Democrats are saying that, you know, noncitizens never vote, [that], this is a non-issue, but every county we're finding people that are self-reporting now, and I'm glad we're doing these records request because it's really eye-opening, because this is just the people that have self-reported."
That last line deserves emphasis. The noncitizens identified so far are only the ones who voluntarily came forward. No state mechanism flagged them. No audit caught them. They flagged themselves, often because they feared the consequences of staying registered while seeking citizenship.
The RNC has requested information about voter registration list maintenance processes from 48 states. Gruters said that New Jersey and other Democrat-run states have been unwilling to disclose that information. Cases of illegal immigrants voting in U.S. elections have been piling up across the country, and the resistance to transparency only deepens the concern.
New Jersey Republican Party Chairwoman Christine Giordano Hanlon put the early findings in perspective, noting that the review is far from over:
"We have just begun our analysis and already uncovered hundreds of instances of non-citizens placed on New Jersey's voter rolls over the past few years. With more records still outstanding, these findings are likely only the beginning."
Hanlon went further, identifying the core structural failure.
"In New Jersey, there is currently no reliable process to consistently identify non-citizens who have been registered to vote. This undermines confidence in the system and highlights the need for stronger safeguards to ensure only eligible voters are registered."
The documents point to the Department of Motor Vehicles as the apparent gateway. Noncitizens told officials they didn't understand how they ended up registered. The Atlantic County letters specifically reference the DMV connection.
A spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles pushed back, insisting the process is sound. He stated that the agency, "together with state and local partners across New Jersey, uses rigorous processes to ensure eligible individuals register to vote through the MVC." He added that individuals who apply to register through the MVC "affirm their citizenship" and that instances of noncitizens claiming eligibility are "exceedingly rare" and "taken extremely seriously by this agency."
"Exceedingly rare" is a difficult phrase to square with more than 50 documents from a single county showing noncitizens who say they were registered without their knowledge. Multiply that across 21 counties, and the math starts to look less reassuring. A recent lawsuit in California alleged 873,000 inactive voter registrations remain on that state's rolls, suggesting the problem of bloated, poorly maintained voter lists is not confined to one state.
The New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission did not return a request for comment. Neither did Atlantic County officials. Neither did the office of Democratic New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill.
Three entities that could shed light on how noncitizens ended up registered, and all three declined to say a word.
Gruters said the RNC already has staffers in 17 states working on election integrity ahead of the November elections, building on what he called the organization's 2024 push that continues today.
"We have staffers already in 17 states working on these issues to make sure that, like I said, it goes back to having a safe and secure election that's free and fair."
He also drew attention to the Supreme Court, which is set to decide Watson vs. RNC, a case challenging laws that allow ballots to be cast by mail on election day but counted days later. Gruters highlighted California as a case study in delayed counting, noting the state was still tallying ballots from its primary elections almost a week after polls closed.
The broader landscape of ballot security concerns has drawn federal attention as well. A federal prosecutor recently toured an LA County ballot facility as election fraud probes expand across the country. And the problems aren't limited to registration rolls or ballot counting, a Kentucky Democrat dropped out of a primary last month after security cameras caught him taking a voter's mail.
Gruters described the RNC's election integrity work as potentially "one of our biggest election victories ever" and said the effort to end extended ballot-counting timelines has an "open-ended target date."
"We're fighting hard to put an end to this, and this, like I said, this could be probably our biggest win ever from an election integrity standpoint by stopping this and making sure that election day means exactly what it says, election day."
The facts here are straightforward. Noncitizens were placed on New Jersey voter rolls. Some of them voted, in primaries, municipal races, and a general election. The state had no reliable mechanism to catch them. The people who came forward did so on their own, often out of fear it would derail their immigration cases.
And the officials who could explain how it happened, the governor's office, the motor vehicle commission, the county, said nothing.
Democrats have spent years insisting that noncitizen voting is a myth, a right-wing fixation with no basis in reality. The documents from Atlantic County say otherwise. So do the cancellation forms filled out by noncitizens who checked "other" and wrote, plainly, that they were not citizens.
Hundreds of instances across New Jersey, and the review has barely started. The RNC is requesting records from 48 states. If New Jersey, a state with unified Democratic control of every lever of government, can't keep its voter rolls clean, the question isn't whether this is happening elsewhere. It's how much worse it gets when nobody bothers to look.
A democracy that can't tell the difference between a citizen and a noncitizen on its own voter rolls isn't broken by accident. It's broken by neglect, and neglect, in politics, is always a choice.