Trump Charges New Jersey Vote Rolls Are Rigged After Non-Citizen Error

Trump seizes on New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill's disclosure that a Motor Vehicle software error registered roughly 6,600 non-citizens, calling the state's elections rigged.

First Published: July 21, 2026, 6:14 PM ET

WASHINGTON D.C. — Donald J. Trump accused New Jersey of running rigged elections after the state’s governor disclosed that a software error registered roughly 6,600 non-citizens to vote.

Trump amplified a post from journalist Jake Sherman relaying a statement by New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill. Sherrill said a Motor Vehicle Commission software flaw added the registrations between June 2023 and June 2024. Fewer than 400 of those individuals actually voted, spread across Democratic, Republican and Unaffiliated rolls, she said.

Here is the full post on Truth Social: “Rigged Elections!!!” atop the relayed statement, in which Sherrill said: “Last week I learned that a serious software error in New Jersey’s Motor Vehicle System led to the registration of roughly 6,600 people who indicated that they were not U.S. citizens between June 2023 and June 2024, almost three years prior to my taking office. These individuals answered “no” when asked on a keypad whether they were a U.S. citizen when applying for drivers’ licenses and identification cards, but through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway.” on July 21, 2026 at 9:58 PM ET.

This is the first message released by Trump today. On average, Trump produces roughly 15 posts per day since his inauguration on January 20, 2025.

The move fits a broader pattern in Trump’s recent messaging, with 94 of his 469 posts over the last 30 days focused on Elections.

Sherrill framed the error as a failure of the prior administration rather than her own. “This happened under the previous administration and, upon learning this information, I immediately ordered my chief counsel to launch an investigation,” she said in the statement. She added that she directed the removal of residents erroneously added to voter rolls, and that a new Motor Vehicle Commission Administrator began replacing the vendor responsible for the system.

The dispute pits the White House against a Democratic governor in a state Trump has repeatedly cited when questioning election security. Sherrill, a military veteran and former federal prosecutor, said Trump has “zero credibility on the issue of election integrity,” accusing him of spreading lies about legitimate results. The stakes cut both ways: Trump gains a fresh example for his fraud claims, while Sherrill positions her administration as the party that found and fixed the problem.

47th President Donald J. Trump posted a screenshot of a statement by New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill on Truth Social at WASHINGTON D.C.

Claims that American elections are “rigged” have circulated on both sides for years, and the accusations grew loudest around the 2016 and 2020 contests. Rigging an election can mean stealing votes through impersonation, ballot stuffing or tampering, or building a system that favors one candidate, according to brookings.edu. Election fraud remains a defined but rare category of misconduct that officials investigate and prosecute, according to polyas.com.

For the average New Jersey voter, the disclosure raises the question of whether ineligible registrations touched a race outcome. Sherrill’s preliminary count of fewer than 400 votes cast falls far short of the margins that decide statewide contests, which typically run into the tens of thousands.

This has happened before. Voter-roll errors tied to motor-vehicle registration systems have surfaced in multiple states. Audits after recent presidential cycles found only isolated cases of ineligible voting rather than results-altering fraud, according to brennancenter.org. Recounts in Wisconsin and Nevada after the 2016 election produced only minor changes, according to brookings.edu.

The next decisions rest with Sherrill’s chief counsel, who is leading the internal investigation, and with any federal or state authorities that choose to review the matter. A date for the investigation’s findings has not been announced.

Disputes over New Jersey’s ballots are not new. In 1981, the Republican National Committee deployed a “Ballot Security Task Force” in the state’s gubernatorial race, posting armed off-duty officers near polling places in minority neighborhoods, according to brennancenter.org. The episode produced a federal consent decree that restrained the RNC’s poll-monitoring operations for more than three decades. A court lifted the decree in 2018, reshaping how national parties police elections nationwide.