There are election administration errors and there are election administration errors that result in 75,000 noncitizens receiving jury duty summonses because they were automatically enrolled on the voter rolls by a state system designed to register eligible citizens, and New Jersey has produced the second kind, which is the kind that requires a Fox News exclusive, a Republican senator demanding a probe, and Democratic officials explaining why 75,000 is not the number it sounds like.
New Jersey’s automatic voter registration system, which registers residents when they interact with state agencies including the DMV, enrolled approximately 75,000 noncitizens on the voter rolls, per Fox News’s confirmed reporting published this morning. The enrollment was detected when those individuals received jury duty summonses, which require citizenship as a condition of service, and the jury system identified them as ineligible. The voter rolls had not identified them as ineligible, which is the gap that produces the Fox News exclusive and the Republican demand for a probe.
State Sen. Kristin Corrado called the revelation the “tip of the iceberg” and urged a comprehensive audit of New Jersey’s voter rolls, arguing that if 75,000 noncitizens were summoned for jury duty, the question of how many were registered to vote rather than merely summoned for jury duty requires a separate answer, which New Jersey’s Democratic officials have not yet provided. “Officials dismissed concerns about New Jersey’s automatic voter registration system,” Corrado said, which is accurate in that Democratic officials have consistently described the system as functioning as designed, which is now an argument that requires defining what the system was designed to do with 75,000 people who were not supposed to be in it.
Automatic voter registration has been adopted by 23 states and Washington, D.C. The policy is designed to increase registration rates among eligible citizens by removing the manual registration step. It is not designed to register noncitizens, which is what it did in New Jersey, which is the operational distinction that 75,000 jury summonses has made visible.
Democratic officials have not yet addressed the audit request. The voter rolls still contain the 75,000 enrollments. The probe has been demanded but not opened.
When 75,000 noncitizens get jury summonses because the voter registration system enrolled them and Democratic officials say the system is working as designed, what exactly was it designed to do?
Sources
Fox News: NJ illegal voting scandal — 75,000 noncitizens summoned for jury duty
