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For years, the liberal establishment told America that noncitizens don’t vote in elections.
But increasing evidence in New Jersey is proving that’s not true.
About 6,600 people on the voter rolls had told the state before they were registered that they weren’t U.S. citizens, according to reports from multiple media outlets.
Yet New Jersey registered them to vote anyway.
Now the state claims it was just a software glitch.
But my experience as an elected official tells me that if there is a glitch anywhere, it’s in the law under which they were registered.
It’s clear that we have to reform our voter registration laws to restore confidence.
As recently as September 2024, the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice called noncitizen voting “vanishingly rare.”
Whether they meant it was too rare to be consequential or that it was a problem shrinking into insignificance, they were wrong.
In fact, data from across the state and the nation suggest that, if anything, the problem has been aggravated in recent years by Democrats’ rush to accommodate millions of refugees, so-called asylum-seekers, and illegal immigrants.
As a first-generation, native-born American whose parents escaped from the clutches of a communist government — yet still immigrated legally — I know what coming to America means.
It has never meant quickly accommodating immigrants who don’t qualify for commercial or standard driver’s licenses, such as those who can’t read signs or rule books or those who have criminal records, in the hope that they will integrate into society more quickly.
Driving in America is a privilege, and treating it as an entitlement has been a profound mistake.
The mistake has been compounded by the automatic integration of voter registration into the process of getting a license.
The combination has turned voting into an entitlement for some who are not qualified to vote.
Called Motor Voter, the federal law that integrated voter registration with motor vehicle licensing was supposed to help increase voter participation while ensuring that only Americans vote.
The law failed on both counts.
Motor Voter succeeded spectacularly at registering people, which isn’t surprising when you’re not particularly careful about whom you register.
Still, there is remarkably little evidence that it succeeded at getting them to vote.
We can, however, come to some conclusions about voting integrity after three decades of this voter registration law.
We know there are noncitizens on the voter rolls; we just don’t know how many. We also know there are noncitizens who are voting; we just can’t — or won’t — quantify the size of the problem.
We know, too, that noncitizen voting isn’t just an issue confined to New Jersey.
As early as 2017, the state of Pennsylvania found that up to 100,000 noncitizens had been registered to vote due to a “software glitch” involving Motor Voter registration.
Nearly a decade later, Pennsylvania has still refused to be transparent about the issue, never telling us exactly how many voters were ineligible or whether they voted.
Last month, the Department of Homeland Security sought information from four different states — California, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey — where federal records show that up to 250,000 noncitizens are carried on the voter rolls.
The states, led by Democrats, are refusing to cooperate.
That might be the biggest problem of all.
Trust in U.S. elections is declining across parties and demographics.
That should not be surprising, as Democrats continue to resist transparency about who is being carried on the voter rolls.
Not being able to answer basic questions such as how many noncitizens are registered to vote and how many are actually voting won’t bolster trust, especially when it’s wrapped in the academic disdain of, “Trust us, it’s vanishingly rare.”
Let’s be clear: one illegal voter is too many.
EDITORIAL: HOW MANY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT VOTES IS TOO MANY?
And every new revelation weighs heavily on those Americans whose votes are canceled out because an ineligible immigrant casts an illegal ballot.
The only solution to address the trust gap is to reform voter registration laws.
Mario Kranjac is an attorney, venture capitalist, and former mayor of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Nicknamed the “Trumpy Mayor,” he unseated a deep blue political dynasty and is working to save the state from one-party rule.
