House GOP Moves Toward Hearings and Subpoenas After Sherrill’s Reply on 6,600 Noncitizen Registrations

House Republicans say they will hold Judiciary Oversight Subcommittee hearings and are preparing possible subpoenas after Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s written reply to a 12-question congressional inquiry into how thousands of people who identified themselves as noncitizens were placed on New Jersey’s voter rolls. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., the subcommittee chairman, told Fox News Digital the governor’s letter was “snarky, political, abusive, personal” and that it failed to answer most of the questions posed July 24 by Van Drew and Republican Study Committee Chairman August Pfluger, R-Texas. “We’re not done with this,” Van Drew said. He is scheduling a hearing with expert witnesses and working with Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, on records from Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell, who serves as secretary of state. “If there’s a complete lack of cooperation after we build up a case, there is a possibility, it’s not definite,” Van Drew said of subpoenas.

State officials say a Motor Vehicle Commission process between June 2023 and June 2024 — during Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration, before Sherrill took office in January — transmitted data that put about 6,600 people who answered that they were not U.S. citizens onto the rolls. Sherrill’s later review said about 5,100 of those registrations were placed in deleted status and about 1,450 were marked rejected pending county review of eligibility. Officials revised the voting count from an initial “fewer than 400” to about 340 people who were newly registered because of the error and later voted. Another 220 people who voted had earlier registrations or separate attestations and remain under county review. Sherrill blamed a software error involving longtime vendor IDEMIA and said the problem was fixed in June 2024 but not disclosed until July 2026. IDEMIA said its system recorded applicants as answering “Yes” to wanting to register and “No” to citizenship, that the data were available to the MVC, and that the state transmitted the files to elections officials. The company said MVC later asked it to block noncitizens from the registration path. The state is replacing the vendor and hired CSG Law for an independent review.

The July 24 letter asked how the transmissions happened, which elections were affected, whether any races were closer than the number of those ballots in those jurisdictions, whether all improper registrations were off the rolls, and what safeguards would be in place before the midterms. Sherrill’s public reply described notices to affected residents, credited her administration with cleanup, and criticized President Trump. She has refused a Justice Department request for names, dates of birth, nationalities, and addresses, citing privacy law. An attorney for Caldwell told House staff the state would produce an “initial” set of records. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said his department identified four noncitizens — nationals of Israel, Jamaica, Liberia, and India — who illegally cast ballots and that each faces charges. The Republican National Committee sent National Voter Registration Act notices to Caldwell and election officials in Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Middlesex, Somerset, and Union counties seeking removal and verification records by Sept. 15. Van Drew said the congressional questions were about system integrity, not Trump, and that hearings would proceed when the House is back.