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From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi.

Hello and thanks for joining us.

I'm Joanna Gagis.

We're bringing you a special NJ Spotlight News edition of Reporters Roundtable, where I'll have a roundup of the top political stories of the week with the help of a panel of local journalists.

The Reporter's Roundtable starts right now.

The news hit hard and the fallout's been harder.

Republicans are calling it votergate.

Governor Sherrill announced this week that 6,600 non-citizens were registered to vote between 2023 and 2024, and 400 of them actually voted in a New Jersey election.

So what happens now?

Hi, everyone.

I'm Joanna Gagis.

This is Reporters Roundtable.

We've got a panel of journalists here with us to help unpack all that's happened in this last week of New Jersey news.

Let's see our panelists we have with us today.

Colleen O'Dea, senior writer and projects editor for NJ Spotlight News.

We've got Matt Friedman, reporter for Politico and author of the New Jersey Playbook, and Charlie Stile, political columnist with the Record and USA Today Network.

Well, Republicans say they're vindicated.

After all, they've been saying for years that undocumented people are voting in New Jersey's elections, so is the number 400, like Governor Sherrill said, or is it closer to the 35,000 that Republicans once claimed?

Either way, there's lots to unpack here.

Colleen, I'm going to start with you.

Lots of questions swirling about how this happened.

So what do we know so far?

Yeah, I mean, certainly, Joanna, there are still a lot of questions there.

Maybe more we don't know than that we do know.

But what we know is that Governor Sherrill told us on Tuesday that what she described as a software problem or issue that happened with, again, she's saying the vendor, Ademia, or Ademia, I'm not sure how to pronounce it, allowed for the registration of 6,600 non-citizens between June of 2023 and June of 2024, because we do have in New Jersey voter registration, motor voter, what it's called, right?

You can register to vote at the Motor Vehicle Office.

And what she's saying happened is that even though these 6,600 people said they were not citizens or they did not want to register, they were registered to vote anyway.

So this happened, you know, even though they didn't want it to.

And then further, and this is just a preliminary part of their investigation, 400 of those people cast ballots in at least one election since that time period.

- Okay, we're gonna take this piece by piece.

There's a whole lot to break down.

I'm gonna start with what you just said.

This vendor, Ademia, we'll call them, they're based in France, I believe.

They say it was not them.

They say that this is the NVC that was responsible.

Can you help us understand, Colleen, how it could be that a person who checks the box that says, "I am not a citizen," "could then be possibly able to check the next box that says, 'would you like to register to vote?'"

Yeah, that's a very good question.

That's one we don't know the answer to.

I can tell you that what I know about, so county election officials have actually been talking about this possibility, or this actually happening outside of this one-year time period for years.

There was a committee hearing two years ago for this to change the ballot design and this came up at the hearing.

What happens is you go into the Motor Vehicles Office and you say, you know, I want to register.

You've got some documentation.

If you're a non-citizen, because we allow non-citizens to get a license, you present your documentation, you know, to show who you are, your birth certificate, whatever.

And then you have, then you go to, I'm told a separate line, right?

So you present your documentation.

Okay, now they call you up to a different location.

And there, that is when you have to answer all these questions about, you know, registering to vote, citizenship.

And so at some point in this process, there is either a disconnect or, and this is a very real possibility, the, if you have a person who comes in and is, has limited English skills and is told, you know, fill out this pin pad, the pin pad where you have to sign or answer questions, it's only in English.

So the person potentially does not know what they're even saying yes or no to.

They just think they're supposed to say yes, they may click that.

And so it's an honest mistake.

Somewhere in this process-- again, it could be at multiple locations-- people have been allowed to register to vote.

- Demia says-- and I'm getting this from Republicans who quoted them.

I didn't hear directly from the company.

But they say, at no point was a non-citizen ever marked as a citizen in the database.

So they deny that they ever made that change.

And so then that, you know, the questions remain, where does responsibility lie?

We're gonna come back to that.

But Matt, Republicans are obviously pouncing on this.

And they're saying this was human error.

They say the numbers are way off.

They've said 35,000 at one point.

We did hear from the GOP chairwoman, who I had a chance to speak to earlier this week, Christine Hanlon.

She wasn't saying 35,000 in the press conference she held yesterday, but they are now calling for a subpoena, especially, they're calling for subpoena power, a committee with subpoena power in the legislature to be able to take a look at this.

What are you hearing, Matt, from Republicans?

- Yeah, similar, I think the 35,000 number was kind of thrown out there.

It's Trump as a preliminary number by the Trump administration.

We know that they've thrown out previous numbers like that, and as their methods get refined to the extent that they do, it usually goes down quite a bit.

Are there going to be more than 6,600 non-citizens registered to vote?

This was just a one-year period.

Almost certainly.

No idea how many more.

It's never been like, it's a straw man to say people say this didn't happen.

The question is, like, because, you know, Republicans called out when we were enacting motor voter registration in 2018, 2019, that it's basically an honor system for the person registering.

They say, I am a citizen or not a citizen.

The difference here is like, what a DMV says is that they didn't have the software set up and it was the states that wanted it this way, is what they say, 'cause it's like tested by the state, which is, well, you should say, when it asks you if you're a citizen and you check no, it shouldn't give you the option to register.

It should be an automatic decline to register, but it hadn't been that way from June, 2023 to 2024.

So there's probably a larger number of people who are prompted to register to vote even after they said they weren't citizens, even though they still went through with the process.

So I think there's probably more, it's a big question.

Nobody knows how many more.

It's a perfectly reasonable question to ask.

I also think it's important to keep it in perspective because the Trump administration and many of the people in that MAGA world, take this as a way to, because anytime they lose an election they can't accept that they've lost the election a lot of this time.

Not necessarily candidates themselves.

Jack Ciatarelli acknowledges he lost the gubernatorial election, but there's already people, you know, many people on the side of things who say, "Oh, well, this was the biggest turnout in however many years, and the biggest turnout raw numbers ever.

How can that be?"

It's like, well, there's a lot of reasons that can be.

And they, you know, they go with the idea that hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants voted and they all voted for Cheryl without, in the absolute, complete absence of any evidence whatsoever for that.

They just, but this gives an opportunity to feel those things.

And the fact is, it probably is quite a bit worse than we yet know, because it has been on effectively an honor system.

And the question is, how much have the, I believe it is ultimately each county's commissioner of elections, whoever that is, sometimes it doubles as another role, who's responsible for vetting these?

How often were they actually vetting them for citizenship?

In this case, these people weren't vetted, so it gives you an idea that other people who said yes, even if they weren't originally, if they said, you know, anyone else perhaps could have, it probably wouldn't be this many for that period of time, but there's almost certainly others.

Yes.

Yeah.

So, and Matt's, I'm sorry.

So Matt's absolutely right that it's the county commission, my understanding too, is that it's the county commissioners of registration who are responsible for vetting this.

But what those folks say is that, geez, we thought that the DMV was doing, or the MVC was doing a good job.

They, you know, they're the ones who are asking, are you a citizen?

And they also say that they don't really have the tools to vet that, or they don't really have the, they're not legally able to do it.

So depending on the size of the county, right, if you're a county like a Monmouth County or a Bergen County, where you have hundreds of thousands of registrants, and you're getting, you know, maybe a hundred or a couple hundred of registrations a day in, there's no, or at least there had not been a database that you could go to to see, yes, these are the list of citizens.

And you didn't have the ability to call, and again, I'm told you really are not supposed to be calling individuals and saying, hey, are you really a citizen?

Are you really supposed to be registered?

So it seems like there's a lot of- - And Colleen, I'm gonna come back to that point, 'cause I wanna bring Charlie in here.

Charlie, just kind of break down the laws.

There are two laws that were passed in New Jersey, right?

One in 2018, and then one right before Governor Phil Murphy left office that allowed for this type of automatic voter registration at the DMV.

Can you just break down, and it puts New Jersey among about, I believe, a dozen states to do this.

Help us understand that.

Well, yeah, I think you explained it pretty well.

And I think at the time there was pushback from Republicans that this was going to create some of these problems.

And they warned, and now they are on their soapbox with an "I told you so" chorus that some of these things that they warned about are now coming to fruition.

I think also back to the point about self-report, honor system, one of the ways I think the Republican press conference pointed out yesterday is that a lot they became aware of this or some of the county clerks or county voter officials became aware of this when some people came and self-reported.

I guess they were people who were in the process of getting citizenship and they're being naturalized and this was flagged and they wanted some sort of notification from the county that they were deregistered, they wanted to be deregistered and some wanted, I was told even this morning from a legislative aid, that some wanted representation that they could take back to a naturalization service and show that they did not vote and were denied.

Right, because this could disqualify them from citizenship.

Right, right.

So they say these are just people who were honest, who self-reported.

I guess the question that they raised that we heard a lot yesterday, Charlie, was, and we still don't know the answers, who ended up voting in these elections?

And some of them very, very close when we're looking at small, local, school board, mayoral, even county elections, right?

Many of these are decided by narrow margins.

That's correct.

That is one of the big mysteries of this is, did any of these non-citizen votes tilt a close election?

And that's going to be a very, I mean, that's going to be a very tedious and difficult forensic probe to get to the bottom of that.

But it's a question that a lot of people are going to ask.

And the more they ask it, the more this issue stays front and center of the agenda here.

And that's just one aspect of this whole thing, as Matt and Colleen have pointed out.

There's also talk there's probably going to be some federal hearings.

Somewhat ironically, Jeff Fandrew leading the charge on that.

Everybody knew who Craig Calloway was when Jeff Fandrew hired him twice for campaigns and committed voter fraud while working on his campaign, admittedly.

Fandrew claims ignorance of it, and he actually had, you know, Calloway sign something promising he wouldn't break the law.

I mean, naturally, a guy who's been to prison before for corruption and who is notorious for his ballot harvesting techniques, just, you know, "Hey, he signed that, you know, trust that."

So I think there's a little bit of disingenuousness there about the integrity of elections, but this is still a very important issue.

I think it's a huge mess.

It could get a lot messier.

I think, you know, the idea of 6,600, that's our starting point here.

The question is whether it's upwards of what the Trump administration claims were closer to what Mikey Sherrill found.

- And to that point, Matt, I mean, and Colleen, I'll bring you in on this.

We heard from Christine Hanlon yesterday, a GOP chair who said that they had evidence, as Charlie mentioned, of those people who self-reported outside of that one year window.

They say this was well before.

I don't know what they can document as after that 2024 time period.

But Colleen, something we heard from the Republicans yesterday was that some of this might have come out because of the lawsuit from the Trump administration requiring New Jersey to hand over its voter rolls and the threat of prosecution for anyone who knowingly allowed a non-citizen to vote in an election.

Is that a likely scenario that that's how the Sherrill administration ended up discovering this?

They say the Murphy administration knew way back in 2023, 2024, and that the governor only found out about it this past Wednesday.

What do you, how do you see it?

What do you know?

The timing is certainly very suspicious because why would this suddenly have, you know, this thing that happened a couple of years ago suddenly be cropping up last week?

So I would think that, yes, the timing is definitely suspicious.

But again, this is another question that we don't know.

I mean, I've asked, I'm sure my colleagues have asked, you know, how did you find out when, you know, how did the Murphy administration find out?

We just don't have any of those answers yet.

You know, we know that the governor has launched this investigation with an outside law firm, the Chiesa law firm.

He's, it's not just his firm, but you know, he was our most recent Republican senator for a couple months when Chris Christie put him in.

So it's definitely not just a Democratic firm that's going to be doing this.

But you know, certainly the Republicans are asking for, you know, outside committee subpoena power.

And we've seen that in the past, right?

We've seen it with the Bridgegate scandal and Chris Christie.

But Democrats are in control.

Would the Democrats agree to that at this point?

Certainly we're not hearing that yet.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

I just want to add quickly to that, that the on the question of the timing.

I mean, it's very plausible that they, that 35,000 number is tied to this whole effort by the Trump administration to pressure states that deliver voter data for a national database in New Jersey's resisting, other states as well.

And I think they, it's quite plausible.

They were like saying, okay, how can, what is the real number?

How can we push back on this?

And in that process, they come across this problem, or this problem is flagged and revealed to them by the new DMV-- or, sorry, MVC.

So it's very plausible that that could happen.

I just want to add that to Colleen's-- I'm sorry, Matt.

Matt, go ahead.

You had something to add, too.

Yeah, I just think legislative Democrats really need to grapple with the way they passed this law, because they were warned that, you know, it was essentially on an honor system.

The fact that you are both, you know, taking steps to make it so easy to register to vote, which I, that's, I understand the impulse to reduce barriers to voting.

But you also do need to make sure there are some safeguards in there.

And especially if this was called out at the time.

And really it was kind of brushed away, but it was always sort of like, you know, an open question.

Like, well, is it that easy?

And you have some thought, well, there must be some safeguards.

Well, apparently really not.

But I also think it's important to keep things in perspective.

That even if the number of registrants is significantly higher, even if it is 35,000, many of those people might not even, you know, remember that they did register.

And you also see these same people trying to conflate this.

People say, "Oh, but there's all these dead voters on the rolls, and there's voters who are also registered in other states."

It's like, yeah, because, like, when I'm on my deathbed, I'll try to remember, "Hey, make sure you take me off the rolls."

And so I don't... I'm going to try to remember, but I cannot guarantee that that will happen.

-Uh, hopefully it won't be for a little while.

-Yeah.

But that's the kind of stuff.

They like to conflate everything and create this impression of something bigger than it is.

I'm not saying this is not a problem.

It is, but we also need to keep it in perspective that non-citizens should not be voting.

That doesn't mean it was, there's a lot of suggestions by Republicans that this is intentional.

- But it does, Matt, bring in the question.

It does bring in the question of the system of checks and balances.

- Yeah, I'm just saying, never make a conspiracy what can more easily be explained by incompetence.

It works almost every time.

(laughing) - The way you've described our government.

Colleen, there's a lot of finger pointing here because you say that it is the counties that have the responsibility for oversight.

And we heard from Hanlon, who is the Monmouth County Clerk, who said, "Counties are responsible for issuing ballots to anyone who's registered.

We are not the ones who need to confirm that the people who are registered should be registered.

That falls to the State Division of Elections, which falls under the Secretary of State.

Is she correct?

Yeah, so again, my understanding is that the Secretary of State's office kind of houses or oversees the voter registration system, which is where all of these, where you can find everybody's names, right, all of, well, hopefully Matt's name isn't in there, he's not in New Jersey anymore, but the rest of our names are probably in there, right, as voters, but it's up to the county officials, because they are actually the commissioners of registration.

It is technically up to them to oversee registration.

So those are the folks who every four years, typically after a presidential election, will do a cleanup of the voter rolls.

These are the folks who you're allowed to take off the voter rolls when they haven't voted into federal elections, when they're not answering, or if they're, you know, absentee ballots.

I'm sorry, their sample ballots are being returned as undeliverable because they no longer are at an address.

These are the people who, when someone dies, and there is theoretically the process as I understand it, is that, you know, depending on the county, a list will come over maybe once a month saying, you know, this is the list of deaths that were recorded.

These are the people who are supposed to take those people off of the rolls.

I think it is technically up to them, but I think Christine is right in terms of saying there really is no way for them to check, in this case, citizenship.

And this points to the heart of really the DOJ's case against New Jersey and several other states that refused to turn over their voter rolls.

Trump administration says it wants to verify who's a citizen and non-citizen.

Matt, there was some news in the appeals court this week about that case.

What can you tell us?

I'm sorry.

Oh, the Trump administration case?

Yes.

New Jersey seeking voter rolls.

I'm sorry, it wasn't the appeals court.

It wasn't the appeals court, but there was an update in that case.

What can you tell us?

Last I heard was that they were appending this, you know, to the case.

They are making demands for the documents as part of this case and to try to strengthen this case.

I mean, they've done this in a lot of states where they're seeking a lot of information besides just, you know, basic voter roll information.

New Jersey is refusing.

And I believe they've lost in every single state.

It's in the teens, I believe.

So maybe this strengthens their argument, or maybe this is not exactly germane to that specific part of it.

Charlie, some people are saying that the Democrats just handed the midterms over to the Republicans with all of this.

Do you see this really having that type of impact in the next election?

Not yet, no.

I don't.

I just think that this feeds the Trump narrative of fraud, but he's really tailoring it to let's pass the SAVE Act, which would impose strict new voter identification requirements.

And that really seems to be his primary aim right now.

And he doesn't right now because he doesn't have the Republican votes to get that passed.

Plus, he would need to eliminate or suspend the filibuster.

And I don't think a lot of Republicans who like the filibuster are gonna go with that.

So it's pretty much a dead in the water.

- Do you think, Charlie, that this reignites, do you think this reignites the desire to push forward the Save America Act on the Republican end when they say, "Hey, look at what happened in New Jersey.

It could happen anywhere."

I don't see evidence of that, and I don't think so.

Again, as I was saying before, I think this is an institutional ... There's two problems with the SAVE Act.

It's, as I mentioned, the filibuster.

A lot of those Western state senators don't want to suspend or get rid of the filibuster to get this across the finish line.

And be there are problems with the nuts and bolts of that bill to begin with, you know, particularly the birth certificate requirement that would complicate the lives of a lot of women voters, imposing some people are requiring a passport, it just makes it, it could harm people in their own base.

And so I think that bill is a problem.

Will it help if he wants to ramp up more of the, you know, Democrats are trying to rig the election with voter fraud, see what happened in New Jersey.

He's gonna do that, I think at some point.

But I think there's so many other problems that are dragging down Trump's, so many negatives around.

- Let me jump in here, Charlie.

- I hate to cut you off, but I only have, I gotta cut you off 'cause I only have about a minute left.

And Colleen, I just wanna point out that does this only deepen the divide that we've seen between the Sherrill administration and the Murphy administration?

There's all the finger pointing right now has been to Murphy here.

And by the way, adding World Cup and all of that happened with the FIFA deals.

How do you see it?

- Yeah, I mean, certainly when you bring up the World Cup, right?

I mean, I think she was very clear in saying that, you know, she was kind of given this job of hosting the World Cup.

He's out.

He put it in, or he and his wife, you know, got New Jersey into this, but then now they're out of office.

And certainly she is not- Just a couple of seconds left, Colleen.

She hasn't brought up his name, but she keeps saying the past administration is responsible or this has happened during their watch, the voter issue.

So yes, I would agree with you.

- Yeah, no love there, it seems.

But I don't think that Republicans are gonna let her just point the blame at the Murphy administration.

I think they're gonna keep drilling down on what type of investigation happens here in the state.

And again, whether the legislature has given a committee with subpoena power.

We will keep watching, keep monitoring.

Colleen, Matt, Charlie, great conversation.

Thank you all so much for being a part of it today.

- You can follow me on Instagram @JoannaGagisNJ and go ahead and scan that QR code on your screen to see more episodes of Roundtable.

That's going to do it for us tonight.

I'm Joanna Gagis.

For the entire team here at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for watching and have a great weekend.

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