“Restoring Election Integrity: Oversight of Voter Fraud in New Jersey”
Legend
Transcript markers
- text Sentence being played
- text Search result
- text Intervention cited by the link you opened
Click a sentence to play the video from that moment. Select text to quote it with the speaker, timestamp and link.
More options
House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight U.S. House of Representatives
Follow its sittingsJefferson Van Drew
During that press conference, Sherrill blamed the software vendor IDEMIA and the former Democratic New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy. There's still a lot, a real lot that we don't know about how this happened and why it took so long for the public to learn about it. To date, just some of the things we don't know: what elections these non-citizens voted in, federal, state, or local. And it matters. You know, anybody knows if you follow local elections, they can be a handful of votes very often.
It can even happen in Congress, but certainly at the local level, five votes, 10 votes, three votes, they can make a big difference. 400 votes can make a big difference. How the state government let this happen in the first place. Why didn't New Jersey immediately remove these non-citizens from the voter rolls the moment it found out? And why New Jersey waited two full years to tell the American public about any of this?
Two years. New Jersey knew in 2024. They knew in 2024, they knew in 2025, they knew in 2026, and it wasn't corrected until 2026 when the pressure was on from the Department of Homeland Security and their back was against the wall.
But 2024, nothing happened. They knew, didn't do anything about it. 2025, they knew, didn't do anything about it. 2026, they knew, didn't do anything about it. Didn't inform the public, didn't clean the rolls up until they were forced to, and just held it there.
Ladies and gentlemen, in political terms, that's called a cover-up. It means you don't want people to know what's really going on. So what don't we know? We don't know what elections these non-citizens voted in, federal, state, or local. We don't know how the state government let this happen in the first place.
We don't know why New Jersey didn't immediately, if you found out, mistakes can happen. It's okay, mistakes happen. But you correct the mistakes. You clean up the mistakes immediately, as quickly as possible. You don't let them to continue to vote in primary elections, in general elections, over multiple years.
Why did they wait two full years to tell the American public? And we don't even know, and we can talk about today, if 6,600 is the real number. It could be higher. These are people, the 6,600 are people who admitted they weren't legal citizens but wanted to vote. I don't know how many folks might be out there that didn't admit they were illegal citizens, got their driver's license, and said they also wanted to vote.
This committee, in coordination with the House Administration Committee, launched an investigation into the egregious case of improper voter registrations. We sent letters to New Jersey Lieutenant Governor Dave Caldwell, and I've spoken to him a little bit. He has been somewhat cooperative, but now he is going, undergoing his own internal investigation in the state of New Jersey. And to Idemia, requesting the documents that would show how this happened in an election system that is supposed to be fair and free. It's America.
While Idemia has cooperated, they have. We've met with them, we've talked with them numerous times. New Jersey has done everything it can not to cooperate and stonewall the investigation. I sent, through another, not through Judiciary, but through the Republican Study Committee, sent a letter to the governor. That was a polite letter.
It was an informed letter, asking for information. It wasn't a political letter. And we got a very, very political letter back with no information. Now, thanks to Idemia, the software company, we know that the alleged system error was not an issue on Idemia's end, but rather an issue prompted by the state of New Jersey. Internal documents show that New Jersey government tested and approved the specifications for the Idemia software that allowed these illegals to be registered between 2023 and 2026.
They tested it, they approved it, they allowed it. We also know that 2024, Idemia received a request from New Jersey after the state finally realized that non-citizens were being registered to vote. So they put in a request to Idemia. That means they knew, ladies and gentlemen, they knew in 2024. And then for two years, crickets, nothing happened.
Just kept on going, kept on voting, kept on doing the same old thing. No public warning, no accounting, no investigations, no information for the voters of New Jersey. Just silence.
Republicans forced their hand. That's unfortunate. And by the way, somebody said, well, some of the people that may be voting could be Republicans, that some of them are Republicans. I don't care. If they're not legal, they shouldn't be voting, whether they're a Republican or Democrat or independent.
They shouldn't be voting. This problem exposes real loopholes in federal law, including the National Voter Registration Act, which requires states to offer voter registration materials to people applying for driver's licenses. That's okay, but not for people that are illegals and in some cases illegal criminals. Since 2023, 19 states and Washington, D.C. have allowed non-citizens to apply for and obtain driver's licenses, and with that, access to voter registration materials. Some states even go further and allow non-citizens to vote in local elections.
These factors, combined with weak voter roll maintenance, have made improper registrations like this one more likely, not less likely. I guarantee you, I'll bet anybody anything, if we looked everywhere in the country, and especially some of the states, we'd find a whole lot more. At the start of his second term, the President signed two executive orders imposing criminal penalties for non-citizen voting and giving the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies access for verification. And thank goodness he did, whether you like it or not, because it allowed DHS and the Secretary to shed light on the mess, and it forced the public revelation that had been covered up, that illegal people had voted in elections and had registered thousands of them. This committee is going to do everything it can to continue getting to the bottom of how this was allowed to happen.
It's simple, only Americans should vote in American elections. Not complicated. It's just as simple that American children should be safe in a grocery store parking lot, where they should be safe in their own bed, where they should be safe walking to school. They should be safe on the streets, in their homes, in their vehicles. They should be safe.
It's America. It shouldn't be, what I'm saying now, honest to God, shouldn't be a partisan statement. You heard me say, if a Republican is illegally registered, they shouldn't be voting either. It should be the entire point of government to protect national security, our own security. So I'm going to ask one more time, as we sit here and think about this, whose side are we on?
I know the side, I believe I know the side this committee, or at least the majority of this committee, is on. I would like New Jersey to finally tell us all the information, whose side it is on too. If there is nothing to hide, if there is nothing to see there, there should be no problem. Just turn it over. Let the sun shine in.
Let the light come and let's find out. I thank the witnesses for being here today and we look forward to hearing your testimony too. We will introduce you in a little while as well. I now recognize ranking member Ms. Crockett for an opening statement.
Jasmine Crockett
Thank you so very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses for being here. Definitely thank you to our tireless elected official who decided to travel to D.C. for this hearing.
You know, it seems like we continue to have hearings that are offering solutions in search of a problem. And today I want to make sure that we focus on real problems, not these that are kind of somewhere swarming around in the theoretical world. In 49 days, you the American people can end this country's toxic narcissistic relationship with unified Republican control of government. Now that they're back from their creepy cult convention that took place in my district right there in Dallas, the Republican love bombing is in full effect. They're offering y'all $5,000.
Yes, $5,000 if you just put the Republicans back in control like they are right now. Make sure that they continue to maintain control of the House, make sure they continue to maintain control of the Senate, and make sure that they still are sitting in the White House. And unfortunately, we will never have enough spines in this building or the other to make sure that we can evict the person who never should have been re-elected, but that's a whole other issue. But let's talk about the conversation around $5,000 being offered by the President of the United States at this interim convention. Some who know the law may say that, well, it's against the law.
Some that don't know the law would actually say it as well. It sounds like a bribe because it is a bribe. In fact, we call it vote buying or vote bribing. That is what the President of the United States decided to do, yet our conversation is going to be, or at least my good friend the chairman wants it to be, about the quote-unquote problem with the illegals. And I'm doing quotes for a reason, y'all.
They want to blame the Biden administration for Trump's cost of living crisis, telling you that immigrants or trans people are the reason for all your problems and how only they can help improve your life. Y'all, if they wanted to do that, they would. They wouldn't need you to vote them back into office. They could actually effectuate real change. But let's go through the record because I want to tell you about some of the problems they've caused, right?
The fact that they actually are in control of every lever of government has led to not only American citizens being killed on the streets by ICE, but also so many immigrants. In fact, we are at a historic high as it relates to immigrant deaths. We could talk about the unconstitutional illegal war that's taking place in Iran that has only happened again because they control every lever of government. And frankly, it is costing us American lives as well as plenty of our tax dollars. We could talk about the big ugly bill that for a number of people has made them be put into a position in which they can't afford healthcare.
And if they can afford the healthcare, it's only gone through the roof. Or we can talk about some of their other failed promises. We can talk about the fact that they offered a Doge check. I know that you may not remember Doge, but Doge was the thing that Elon was going to do to save us all kinds of money. But if I run you back to our actual debt, let me tell you, it ain't gone down.
It's gone up a lot. And you still didn't get your Doge check. Or we can talk about the tariffs because the tariffs were illegal as well. Actually, not were, they are. They're illegal and they made the cost of everything go up.
So that's probably why he's offering the $5,000 because you've been out way more than $5,000. But nevertheless, it's his fault. And so he said y'all were going to get a tariff check. Now listen, my bank account works a little different. Maybe y'all got it and I didn't, but last time I checked, I don't know anybody that got a Doge check nor a tariff check.
So I really would not fall for this new scheme of offering $5,000. Not to mention it is illegal. So I think we should have a hearing, Mr. Chairman, about whether or not we're going to enforce the law on people that attempt to do vote buying. But I will continue on. Gas is more than $4, I'm sorry, $4 nationally.
Diesel fuel is the highest it's ever been. We're still at war.
The DOJ is still protecting pedophiles and hiding at least half of the Epstein files, again in violation of federal law. Trump is still trading stocks while in office. Republican-led states are removing hundreds of thousands of people from their voter rolls, including in a state like mine, where in Texas they put over a million people in suspense in Texas. Let me tell you what else they did in Texas, 'cause this is what Republicans do when they have control. They decided in Tarrant County, our third largest county, our county that is trending the right way in Texas, they decided between the primary and the general election, because Republicans were behind Democrats by approximately 40,000 votes, which means that they were now gonna be knocked out of power, they said, "Let's cut one-third of the voting centers, let's make it more difficult for people to vote."
That sounds like a problem to me, but I guess the Republicans will continue to remain silent about those things. The Republicans, in fact, want you to ignore it all. They want you to believe that there are thousands of non-citizens voting in elections. Over the past 44 years, only 100 of the more than one billion votes cast in presidential elections have been potential voter fraud. Let me repeat that.
100 of the more than one billion with a B votes cast in presidential elections have been potential voter fraud. And in states that have conducted audits of their state elections, only 700 of the more than 140 million votes have been associated with non-citizens. Let me just say, Trump is mentioned in the Epstein files 38,000 times. That's more than 53 times the amount of alleged non-citizen votes in state elections and more than 300 times the amount of potential voter fraud in presidential elections. I'm just saying, if your name is mentioned 38,000 times alongside sexual predators, you're probably guilty of something, but I digress.
Trump always made more than 21,000, he's already made more than 21,000 stock trades in just one year in office, more than 30 times the amount of non-citizens in state elections and more than 200 times more than non-citizen votes in presidential elections over the past 44 years. Yet Republicans still haven't held a single hearing on that topic. Look, we all know that the president is the biggest threat to democracy. He's tried to use ICE and the military police so that they can be at polling sites and intimidate people. He's tried to overturn birthright citizenship, he tried to have the Postal Service disrupt voting by mail, he dismantled the Election Assistance Commission, he's making federal agents investigate elections instead of terrorism and human trafficking.
Not to mention, he's the one that started this fight with the mid-decade redistricting so that he could steal more power. And he literally tried to steal the 2020 election. Some people forgot because, well, he ain't being prosecuted right now, but that's a very real thing. He's not just a threat to democracy. He's also the biggest threat to Americans' financial security.
The only reason Americans would need the $5,000 bribe, 'cause that's what it is, is because of his failed policies.
The average American family is paying an additional $3,500 per year for basic necessities under Republicans. More than 4 million Americans have lost their SNAP benefits in just the first year of the big ugly bill. 8 million Americans lost their Affordable Care Act healthcare. Farmer bankruptcies are up almost 50%. And nearly every Republican supported the largest cut to Medicaid in American history.
So check your voter registration and check it often and make a plan to vote. Don't let them scare you away from the polls over the next 49 days. Also don't fall for the lies and distractions. And the final thing that I want to do and I'm going to enter this into the record as well without objection of course. Is I have this article listen it's just facts.
I have this article that is from the Washington Post. And the article the title of the article says Trump and this is on 9/11 Trump asks convention crowd to pledge to him they will vote otherwise cheat like hell. I'm sorry but we do need to have a real conversation about cheating in elections but it doesn't start with the immigrants. It may need to start at the top with the president who literally announced on national TV after he offered a bribe for votes he then told people otherwise cheat like hell. Just remember that.
And Mr. Chairman I'd be happy to have that hearing any day. I yield back.
Yes.
Without objection. Thank you.
I have a unanimous consent motion.
Without objection.
Robert Onder
Thank you. First from Politico July 21st thousands of non-citizens registered to vote in New Jersey due to software error governor says. Next from the Department of Homeland Security on July 17th DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin sends letters to secretaries of state warning about non-citizens on voter rolls. And then from Politico on July 28th Mikie Sherrill refuses DOJ demand for data on New Jersey non-citizen voters citing privacy laws.
Jefferson Van Drew
Without objection. With that I'm going to ask Mr. Jordan is coming back in a little while so we are going to go right to the ranking member of the committee of the whole Mr. Raskin for his for his opening statement.
Jamie Raskin
Thank you kindly Mr. Chairman. Welcome to all of our witnesses today. I'm still waiting for my $5,000 Dodge check Ms. Crockett and the $2,000 tariff check. So I'm not sure they're going to be able to respectfully I'm having a little fun here. I think everybody got it except you.
I don't know why that is but I'm sorry go ahead. Look the president clearly wants to determine the results of this election by engaging in anything other than just persuasion that he's got a program and he's got policies that will benefit the American people. So they're trying mid-decade gerrymandering extreme gerrymandering even that seems to be boomeranging against them in Texas as a number of the districts that the president thought were going to be custom-made for him to take back Congress now are rejecting that ploy against democracy. Voter suppression laws and of course extraordinary efforts at executive branch interference with the administration of elections in the states. But the Supreme Court yesterday rejected in a 7 to 2 decision the president's key gambit of trying to block mail-in balloting in the states finding that he had no likelihood of success on the merits because of course the president simply has no constitutional role in the administration of elections much less does the post office other than just to deliver the mails.
There's no power to compel the states of the United States to submit their voter lists with all of the private information included to the federal government for the federal government's inspection. And there would be severe and irreparable harm caused by throwing 50 different monkey wrenches into the administration of elections in the last eight weeks. So he could not even get it through what he thought was his safely stacked and packed Supreme Court, so pro-Trump extreme that they dealt him for the first time in American history immunity for violent or for any felony crimes committed under the auspices of his office. So in some sense, this is over. I'm afraid this hearing is in ideological service of a scheme that was repudiated yesterday in the Supreme Court.
It was defeated. My colleagues to me appear a little bit like those Confederate soldiers who were off in the forest when the surrender at Appomattox took place and they just kept fighting for weeks and months. They want to convince us that our electoral system is riddled with fraud and we should turn it over to the 34-count convicted felon fraudster to run our elections instead. That's what's going to work. But it's not working.
They have tried to compel dozens and dozens of states to turn over their state voter rolls. The states have rejected it. Both blue states and red states and purple states have rejected it. And the administration has been repudiated in two dozen different courts in this effort. All right, but here we are.
What is our last subcommittee hearing in the infamously unproductive 119th Congress about today? It's about a clerical error by the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. A clerical error that was caught not by the US Post Office, not by President Trump and his team of crack prosecutors at the Department of Justice who've had no fewer than a dozen of their vindictive and selective Trump-ordered political prosecutions and investigations thrown out of court or quashed for people like James Comey, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, Mark Kelly, Megan Goodlander, Jason Crow, Alyssa Slotkin, or take for example my constituent Davey Hearn, the three-time Olympic canoeist and beloved teacher in Montgomery County, Maryland, who was set up on completely bogus trumped-up charges of felony destruction of federal property because he put his hand in the reflecting pool and they were looking for someone else to blame for the toxic algae that has spread through the pool because of all of the mismanagement and incompetence of Donald Trump's pool guy from Mar-a-Lago who got the $16 million insider no-bid contract to work on that. So it was not any of those prosecutors who determined that there was a problem in New Jersey. No, they were working on more important things.
No, the clerical error that we convene to discuss today was discovered and announced publicly by the New Jersey state government itself. Federalism in action. And this mistake did not affect the outcome of a single election in New Jersey from borough counselor or township committee person to governor.
Some 6,600 New Jersey non-citizen residents were improperly registered to vote for one year because of a software computer error made by the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. These non-citizens had not done anything wrong. The software erroneously placed them on the voter rolls. 400 of them, or one in 17, actually voted. There's no evidence that the outcome of any race was swayed by these votes, which constituted less than 1/100th of 1% of the over 4 million votes cast in New Jersey in 2024.
It's obviously unacceptable and egregious that even this small mistake occurred. It is federal law that US citizens and only US citizens can vote in our federal elections, and the previous New Jersey governor administration should have informed the public of this blunder sooner, even if mathematically it had no impact or could have had no impact on the outcome of any race. But no matter how much our colleagues seek to inflate it, a clerical error is not structural corruption, much less is it a criminal conspiracy. It does not rise to the level of, say, a violent insurrection deliberately incited and organized to overthrow a completed presidential election, or a coercive effort to get the Vice President of the United States to reject the electoral college votes cast by millions of people in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and other states. It is not an act of attempted criminal fraud in the voting system, like telling the Secretary of State of Georgia, "Just find me 11,780 votes."
That's not an attempt to block voter fraud, that's an attempt to commit voter fraud. Governor Sherrill, our former colleague here in the House, has been commendably forthcoming about how the mistake in her state occurred, and she is demanding precise answers about the whole snafu. After announcing its existence publicly, her administration has taken aggressive remediation efforts. She's not doubling down on trying to promote voter fraud. She is coming clean about what happened in the past and is taking aggressive efforts to rectify it to ensure that all voter rolls are accurate today and will be accurate in the future.
The state continues to investigate how it happened, contracting with a private law firm to lead an outside investigation headed up by a Republican former US attorney, Jeffrey Chiesa, and it is committed to sharing the results of that investigation with all of the people of New Jersey. If only the Trump administration were as willing to identify and admit its mistakes and try to fix them, rather than doubling down on its errors and its voter suppression schemes with comical lies and bravado. They're still denying that Joe Biden won the election in 2020, where he beat Donald Trump by more than 7 million votes, 306 to 232 in the electoral college. And they continue to lie about that to this day. When the Iran war sent inflationary shockwaves through our economy, driving up gasoline prices by more than a dollar a gallon, Donald Trump never admitted his colossal blunder in going around congressional authority to declare war.
It's only the power of Congress to declare war. So he got us into a stupid, self-defeating, counterproductive, costly inflationary war. Have they admitted it? No, they've denied it. They've claimed victory, I don't know, a dozen times.
They're all over the map with it. When their ICE agents shot dead two American citizens in cold blood on the streets of Minneapolis, did they admit the mistake and come clean and say we're going to do a thorough, complete investigation and open up to the public? Not for one second. His DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem, who spent hundreds of millions of our dollars on customized jets with bedrooms and full bars and PR stunts like photoshoots of her riding horseback at Mount Rushmore, called the victims of government violence domestic terrorists, and they have never apologized either for their original act or for defaming the people they killed.
You get the point. When over a hundred of the January 6th rioters pardoned en masse by Donald Trump went out and criminally re-offended, including by sexually assaulting and exploiting 12-year-old children, robbing houses with domestic invasion, strangling people, threatening to kill FBI agents, Donald Trump never once confessed his dangerous error or did anything to rectify it. He didn't apologize to anybody. Governor Sherrill is showing how real leaders take responsibility for the mistakes of government, even if it wasn't her mistake. She takes responsibility for what the government of New Jersey did.
That's what we can trust. But we can't trust somebody who just covers it all up. Some people in MAGA want to use this isolated mistake in New Jersey to restrict and blockade the voting rights of millions of Americans. But the facts are clear. Non-citizen voting is exceedingly rare.
It's an accident if it does take place overwhelmingly, and it has resulted in the places where it's happened with just as many votes for Donald Trump as for somebody not voting for Donald Trump. But the majority is determined to force through an unnecessary solution to a non-existent problem. They promoted the SAVE Act as the only way to address this imaginary crisis, despite every independent analysis not only confirming that non-citizen voting is remarkably rare, but the SAVE Act would lead to millions of Americans being thrown off of the voter rolls. This drive is not about ensuring the integrity of elections. If it were, Trump would not have gutted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
He would not have disbanded the DOJ and FBI Foreign Influence Threats Task Force. He would not have fired the head of the US Cyber Command. Donald Trump has hollowed out the structural safeguards in our electoral process and will point to the damage he's caused as further proof that our elections cannot be trusted. So, this is not about election integrity. This is about his continuing but fortunately foiled plan to try and disrupt and undermine our electoral process before we vote on November 3rd.
We encourage all fellow Americans, whatever your politics, whatever your party, to make sure that you exercise your right to vote, including by taking advantage of early voting and mail-in balloting as Donald Trump himself did in Florida, and do not buy all of the last-minute propaganda and distortion and offensives against American political democracy. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Jefferson Van Drew
Thank you, and without objection, all the opening statements will be included in the record. We're now going to introduce today's witnesses. Thank you all for being here. I know you have busy schedules and we truly do appreciate your time and your expertise. We'll start with Josh Findlay.
And if I mispronounce anybody's name, feel free to tell me, because I do that all the time. Mr. Findlay is a senior fellow for election integrity policy at the America First Policy Institute. He is also the director of the Election Protection Project at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He has worked for more than a decade on election administration, both for campaigns and national political committees. Welcome.
Mr. Justin Riemer. Correct? Mr. Riemer is the president and chief executive officer of Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections. He previously served as the deputy secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections. Welcome.
Mr. Jason Sena. Mr. Sena is a partner at Archer and Greiner, where he is a member of the state and local government and political law and compliance practice groups. His clients include municipal governments, independent authorities, counties, political parties and political committees and political candidates. Welcome. Mr. Stephen Richer.
Correct?
Correct.
Jefferson Van Drew
Okay. Mr. Richer is a legal fellow at the Cato Institute. His work focuses on election administration, American democracy, executive orders, and American politics. We're going to begin, welcome, welcome. We will begin by swearing you all in.
Please rise and raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief, so help you God?
I do.
Jefferson Van Drew
You may be seated. Let the record reflect that the witnesses have answered in the affirmative. I want you all to know, please know that your written testimony will be entered into the record in its entirety. Accordingly, we ask that you summarize your testimony in five minutes. Mr. Finley, we're going to begin with you.
Josh Findlay
Good afternoon, Chairman Van Drew, Ranking Member Crockett, and members of the Subcommittee on Oversight of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify. Any vote cast by a non-citizen dilutes the vote of an American citizen. That is voter suppression. The left has claimed for years that citizenship verification is unnecessary because non-citizens rarely appear on voter lists and they almost never vote.
However, recently in New Jersey, almost 400 New Jersey citizens had their votes canceled out by a non-citizen, and that's what we know of. Even a small number of illegal votes matters. In 2025 alone, New Jersey had at least three races decided by one vote or less. Warnings about weaknesses in the state's voter registration system and non-citizens on its lists had been raised for months. In fact, in some instances, it seems that registering non-citizens to vote may have been a feature of the system and not a glitch, as the governor called it.
In May, two Democratic state senators noted that people who identified themselves as non-citizens in the state's online driver voter registration system were being prompted to vote. The senators proposed straightforward legislation. People who identify as non-citizens should not be asked to register to vote. It seems shocking that the state needed legislation to fix a system that prompted people to break the law. A month later, the New Jersey Republican Party Election Integrity Task Force identified hundreds of non-citizens were registered to vote, with at least 30 documented cases of non-citizens illegally casting votes, in some cases across multiple elections and for many years.
In New Jersey, the problem was built into the process. The default should be that voters must verify their eligibility before being added to lists, not that people are added to lists and then we hope that the state catches them. Even small numbers matter. They decide races and disenfranchise U.S. citizens, and New Jersey may just be the tip of the iceberg on this issue. These questions are not only being raised in New Jersey.
In fact, they're common among states with less secure election laws. In California, the Secretary of State's office admitted that it does not contain a voter status reason for registration cancellation due to non-citizenship. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 24 states and the District of Columbia automatically register voters and add drivers to voters' lists. In states like Massachusetts and Michigan, applicants can be automatically enrolled through motor vehicle transactions rather than being required to affirmatively register to vote.
Todd Finley
Last October during a hearing, Minnesota State Representative Patty Anderson asked elections director Paul Linnell if the 2023 legislation that gave driver's licenses to illegal aliens would enable those illegal aliens to vote. His silence was deafening. That should seem incredible, not commonplace. Automatic voter registration represents a risk to non-citizens as well. Section 237A6 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which was signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, says any alien who has voted in violation of federal, state, or local constitutional provision, statute, ordinance, or regulation is deportable.
People who support the so-called rights of illegal aliens should ask themselves, if your state gives driver's licenses to non-citizens, automatically registers them to vote, and then mails them a ballot because they're on voter lists, aren't you endangering the very population that you allegedly support? Section 303 of the Help America Vote Act requires states to register voters with their driver's license or social security numbers. If an applicant for voter registration does not have one of those, the law requires states to assign a unique identifying number and register the voter anyway. Policy makers should consider who wouldn't have a driver's license or social security number and ask why such a loophole exists. Fortunately, Section 303 also provides states with a solution.
The state shall determine whether the information provided by an individual is sufficient to meet the requirements in accordance with the law. States have the ability to require proof of citizenship under this law already passed by Congress. The answer to the problem is not to remove names after they appear on voter lists, but rather to prevent improper registrations. That's why Congress needs to pass the Save America Act to ensure that only eligible citizens can participate in American elections. Requiring proof of citizenship would fix the problem of accidental illegal voter registrations.
In many cases, the problem starts before an application reaches the voter registration form. When states issue driver's licenses to non-citizens and connect those systems to automatic voter registration, they create a pipeline that places ineligible voters on voter lists. Election integrity begins with secure voter registration and clean voter lists. It requires maintaining accurate voter lists. Thank you for allowing me to be here today, and I look forward to your questions.
Justin Riemer
Thank you, Chairman, Ranking Member Crockett, and committee members. Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections is an organization that investigates and litigates on election administration issues nationwide. RITE has focused on non-citizen registration issues since its founding, and I hope that experience is helpful as the committee examines this issue. The state recently, New Jersey recently acknowledged that about 6,600 people were registered to vote even after they answered no on the citizenship question at the Motor Vehicle Commission. At least 340 then went on to vote.
The state found the defect in June of 2024 and then left the registrations in place and said nothing publicly for two years. The state blames its vendor. Even accepting that, it misses the real problem. New Jersey did not design its automatic registration system to actually verify citizenship. The front end of the system relies solely on an attestation of citizenship without any further verification.
The attestation was the only safeguard in New Jersey, and these applicants never even gave one. New Jersey caught this only by chance and only after a year. That represents there's only no back-end safeguards that could have caught it any sooner. Officials only noticed that thousands of records were missing a party affiliation, not because they had any mechanism in place to detect the non-citizen registrants. And although officials patched the system so that those answering no to the citizenship question would not be registered to vote, the state took no steps to remove those voters for over two years.
The irony is that DMV registration should be the most secure method we have. Those who obtain a real ID license must provide proof of identity and legal presence in the US, and many of those documents would confirm an individual's citizenship before they are even offered registration. But New Jersey's process ignores those documents entirely. An applicant can hand an MVC worker a green card, a document that conclusively establishes they're a non-citizen, and still be offered voter registration. Even worse, the person has to opt out of registering.
Instead of fixing this, New Jersey recently passed legislation to expand automatic registration. This partly acknowledges the current system's weakness: for real ID applicants, it will only automatically register those who provide documentation indicating citizenship. But it gets there by taking other safeguards away, registering people first and then letting them opt out only after the fact. And it leaves the current vulnerability wide open for those obtaining standard non-real ID licenses, who will still be offered registration regardless of the documentation they provide. Oregon runs the same back-end opt-out system New Jersey is currently replicating.
Their DMV staff misrecorded which documents applicants presented, and nearly 2,000 of them ended up on the rolls that never proved their eligibility. With no attestation backstop, Oregon didn't catch the mistake for three years. New Jersey has shown that some states do not take non-citizen registration seriously, and federal law does not compel them to. It does prohibit non-citizens from registering and voting, but it gives states few tools to enforce that ban by making it difficult to verify citizenship or remove non-citizens already registered. That is why Congress must act.
First, it should pass real citizenship verification requirements. The SAVE America Act would bar a state from registering those who do not provide documentary proof of citizenship. And because the New Jersey applicants presented none, it would have kept them off the rolls. But even narrower reforms directed specifically at DMV registration would plug a huge hole, such as requiring state agencies like DMVs to offer registration only to those who provide proof of citizenship, or at least prohibiting agencies from offering voter registration to those who provide documents indicating non-citizenship. Congress should also require states to use the Department of Homeland Security's SAVE system to identify non-citizens already on the rolls and to codify the Trump administration's efforts to make it free and expand its capabilities.
Congress could also amend the Help America Vote Act to verify citizenship using the license and social security data states already collect during registration. It could also require states to develop programs to remove non-citizens just as they must for removing deceased and non-resident voters. It could also clarify that the National Voter Registration Act's pre-election blackout periods restricting certain list maintenance activities do not apply to removing non-citizens. My written testimony also recommends reforms New Jersey could enact, and I hope officials there will take such suggestions seriously given these recent revelations. Thank you for inviting me to testify, and I'm happy to answer any questions.
Anthony Senna
Thank you, Chairman. Chairman Van Drew, Ranking Member Crockett, and members of the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the apparent causes of improper voter registration of non-citizens in New Jersey. By way of background, I am a licensed attorney in New Jersey. I practice in the area of election law, have been practicing for approximately 15 years, and am a registered voter in my state. I've followed this issue closely.
Everything I'm going to talk to you about today and what's in my testimony is a matter of public record and I'm certainly happy to answer any follow-up questions that the committee may have. As the committee is aware, in July 2026, the state of New Jersey publicly admitted that roughly 6,600 people who indicated that they were not US citizens between June 2023 and June 2024 were registered to vote pursuant to what was described as a "serious software error" in New Jersey's motor vehicle system. The state's decision to publicly come forward with this information, which was known for years, seems to have been precipitated by two things: Secretary Mullen's letter to our governor concerning the potential registration of non-citizens in New Jersey and a due diligence performed by a major political party involving public records requests which revealed the presence as a matter of fact of non-citizens on our voter rolls. Despite the state's admission, publicly available information indicates that non-citizens were permitted to register to vote outside of that timeframe and through other non-MVC methods, which confirms as a matter of fact that the problem is bigger than the state has admitted. The first point that I'll discuss is that state law requires election officials, not the MVC, to determine voter eligibility.
The state blamed the MVC software vendor here for providing, for causing, excuse me, the alleged software error resulting in non-registration registration of non-citizens. This attempt to blame the vendor for unlawfully registering non-citizens is based on a false premise that the MVC itself performs the registration. It does not. It transmits voter information that it collects to election officials who then perform the ministerial non-discretionary tasks of determining voter eligibility and once confirmed registering the applicant. It's clear here that at some level that verification did not occur, although state law and certainly federal law requires it.
This unfortunate situation vindicates the concerns raised by opponents of the legislation that led to automatic voter registration at the MVC. In 2019, the New Jersey legislature held committee hearings on the bill that was before them at that time. During that hearing, then MVC administrator Sue Fulton answered questions of members of that committee concerning the capabilities of the system that was being proposed. During her testimony, she assured members of the legislature that non-citizens would not be able to register to vote although they would be able to get driver's licenses and the chair of that committee made similar representations on the record. It was affirmatively represented to the members of our legislature that the Secretary of State and county election officials would be the ones to determine voter eligibility.
Clearly that did not occur here. As I alluded to earlier, the problem is much broader than the state admits. It's not, to the extent that it is an MVC software error, the problem is not limited to the software error at issue here. For example, public records provided by county election offices in the counties of Hudson and Bergen, two of the state's most densely populated counties, confirm that non-citizens registered to vote before and after the timeframe that we're discussing here and through means other than the MVC. This confirms that the temporal scope of the problem is greater than the state admitted and that the problem is not just limited to the MVC.
Finally, the state's list maintenance practices here are questionable. What we know already confirms that that's the case. It's clear that non-citizens have been registered to vote in New Jersey in violation of law. The means to prevent this from occurring in the future exists. State law requires election officials to verify voter eligibility, including citizenship.
Our election officials need to have the necessary tools available to them to do that. Thank you and I'm happy to answer any questions that the committee may have.
Thank you, Mr. Senna. Mr. Richer, you may begin.
Stephen Richer
Thank you. Members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I served as the elected Republican Maricopa County Recorder from January 2021 until January 2025, where I was responsible for voter registration and early voting for the 4.6 million people in that county. I am now a legal fellow at the Cato Institute, a lecturer and fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center, and the CEO of consulting firm Republic Affairs. Let me begin by saying that I do not think that there is anything inherently wrong with requiring documented proof of citizenship to vote in the United States.
Arizona, my home state, has had a documented proof of citizenship requirement for over 20 years. But as with all public policy proposals, there are tradeoffs. There are costs and there are benefits. To make these calculations, we must first have a clear understanding of the facts. And to date, all evidence suggests that non-citizen voting in American elections is a minute phenomenon.
I am aware of at least 29 non-citizen voter audits performed by states and counties since the beginning of 2021. In May of this year, Utah published its findings from a year-long audit of the state's 2.1 million registered voters. The state found 27 confirmed non-citizens on the voter rolls. 27. That's .001%.
And in Michigan, the Secretary of State recently audited the approximately 725,000 registered voters in Macomb County. That audit found four apparent non-citizens, including one who had actually voted. No thorough professional audit has found that non-citizens constitute anything even close to a tenth of a percent of the state's voter population. Recent federal law enforcement efforts affirm the comparatively microscopic nature of non-citizen voting. According to reporting from the New York Times, Fox, and Reuters, the federal government has mobilized hundreds of highly skilled law enforcement agents to investigate election fraud, especially non-citizen voting.
The results have been entirely consistent with the audits I just mentioned. According to reporting from ProPublica, between January 2025 and May 2026, the federal government charged 41 non-citizens with voting illegally or other election-related crimes. Those who allege widespread non-citizen voting have little support for their position. They often point out that in most states, documented proof of citizenship isn't required. And while that's true, that doesn't mean that non-citizens are actually registering or voting.
Or they point to indiscriminate analyses that use commercial data without personal identifying information such as social security numbers or a driver's license number. They allege a certain number of non-citizens voting, but they never show their work and they don't investigate individual voter files.
Turning to the specific situation of New Jersey, it is the largest finding of registered non-citizens of which I am aware. But by all reports, it was the result not of attempted fraud, but of a software problem caused by imperfect human beings. 6,600 lawful residents of New Jersey checked a box saying they are not citizens. But the software instead marked them as citizens and election officials then registered them as voters. This was a mistake, and it should be fixed as with any other mistake that happens in government.
But some have used this software error to make bold sweeping statements about American elections. Some have said, see, this is why we need documented proof of citizenship. But that wouldn't have fixed the problem. I know this because in Arizona, we have a documented proof of citizenship requirement, and yet we had a very similar problem when the software tying the motor vehicle division with the state election office said certain voters had provided documented proof of citizenship when in fact they had not. And some say, see, this is proof of widespread non-citizen voting.
But again, this was a coding mistake. 6,600 people got improperly registered. 340 of those voted in at least one election. But for context, there are 6.68 million registered voters in New Jersey and 4.3 million of them voted in November 2024. Even in this scenario, this worst-case scenario, non-citizens made up a fraction of a percent of voters.
American elections are accessible, secure, and accurate. We should be proud. Nonetheless, we should continue to improve American elections and we should have conversations about documented proof of citizenship, but we must be honest about the reality of non-citizens voting. Thank you.
Jefferson Van Drew
Thank you, Mr. Richard. One thing I'm going to disagree with you on, respectfully, is the state of New Jersey never said they were citizens, nor did the software say they were citizens. It just moved on and allowed them to be registered. You can check into that. Okay, thank you.
With that, I am going to ask, I'm going to recognize the gentleman from Missouri.
Robert Onder
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Voting is one of the hallmarks of citizenship. It is a cherished right in our Constitution and our laws reserved for citizens. That line has been carefully guarded, and it should stay that way if this country wants to maintain free, fair, and secure elections. What happened in Missouri is not an isolated failure.
Roughly 6,600 people, that's not an isolated failure, who said they were not citizens were placed on the voter rolls. And 400 ultimately cast ballots. The state blames the vendor. The vendor blames the state. But ultimately, the error ran for a year before it was fixed, and it took two more years before the public was told.
New York shows us the problem is not only administrative. The New York City Council passed a law to let non-citizens vote in municipal elections and defended it all the way to the state's highest court. Verifying citizenship at the point of registration shouldn't be controversial. These are common sense safeguards. Why wouldn't we do that?
And they would make sure that only eligible American citizens decide the future of our country. Adrienne Adams co-sponsored and voted for that law, that law, when she was a member of the New York City Council, and as speaker, she took the council's case all the way to the Court of Appeals. This February, Governor Hochul made her the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor of New York. This is not a fringe position in the Democrat Party. It is on the ballot in November.
You know, this issue of election integrity is something that in the Missouri legislature we discussed for many years. Twice our activist Missouri Supreme Court struck down voter ID laws, for instance. We finally got it done in my final year in the Missouri Senate in 2022. The arguments from my Democrat colleagues are always, it never happens. There is no voter fraud, it never happens.
There... no illegal... no alien has ever been registered to vote. No alien has ever voted. New Jersey tells us otherwise. Mr. Senna, can you tell us a little more about the case in New Jersey? How do we... how do we distinguish between unintentional software or administrative glitches and intentional efforts to improperly register aliens or cast votes?
Anthony Senna
Mr. Onder, I think you'd have to look to the point of registration. You know, it's hard to say as I sit here today how to know what somebody's intentions were when they go at the point of registration. But I think we know here that the problem is broader in scope than the state government has come forward and publicly said. There are... and this is all through public... matters of public record that were obtained from county election offices indicate that people, intentionally or unintentionally, registered to vote through the MVC or otherwise before this time window that was set up and after. And that they... it was a matter of fact, they registered.
Whether they meant to do it or not. I should say that the records that I've seen are the folks that were improperly registered all self-removed from the rolls. Ostensibly because they wanted to become citizens and couldn't do so if they were improperly registered. So I think it's important for this committee to know, those records pertain to people who did the right thing. And then that... that might be a subset, yeah.
It sure could, because 75,000 people in New Jersey every year are excused from jury duty for not being citizens. So I don't... that's an answer that I don't know. I don't know what that number is. It could be zero, but it may not be. And it's something that needs to be reviewed.
Robert Onder
Thank you, Mr. Reimer. What obligations do states have under the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act to maintain accurate rolls and which of those obligations would have caught this?
Justin Riemer
Thank you, Congressman. Well, as it relates to non-citizens, there's really nothing. There's an attestation... attestation of citizenship. That's required on any federal register... federal form for people that they use to register. The National Voter Registration Act has a provision that requires states to maintain voter rolls.
It does not address non-citizen removal, although courts have interpreted it to... to remove non-citizens, but it is ac... to force them to do it, but it restricts them from removing them simultaneously. So it does no good, it only does bad.
Speaker 12
So we need to address non-citizen removal here in this body. I... I think right now federal law essentially relies on an honor system that the... that the person is going to attest to being a citizen and there's really nothing else in place that stops it from happening. Thank you, I yield back.
Thank the gentleman, I recognize the ranking member.
Jasmine Crockett
Thank you so much. I just want to highlight something because I want to make sure everyone heard this correct. Mr. Richer, you said you were the Republican like Maricopa County. I just want... the emphasis is on Republican. I just want to make sure I was clear about that and make sure everybody heard it.
Yeah, I got the emphasis, yes, correct.
Jasmine Crockett
Okay, okay, cool. Just want to make sure you heard that. Because I agree.
The things like voter fraud should not be a matter of partisanship. This should be black and white, this should be right versus wrong. And that is why I would love it if the Chairman would go on record and tell me whether or not you will agree to have a hearing on whether or not it is okay to offer people five thousand dollars in exchange for their votes.
Jefferson Van Drew
I will certainly consider that, but I don't think that... since you asked me a question, I'm going to use a few seconds of your time. We've talked about everything else today other than the fact that people who are not legal citizens in the state of New Jersey and the United States of America voted. That's a far cry from somebody saying that, you know, they want to return some of the people's taxpayer dollars to the taxpayer.
Jasmine Crockett
Oh, okay. Well, listen. I mean, you can do that right now. Y'all are in control, so y'all still got a little bit of time. So if y'all want to put something on the floor, you go right ahead because y'all are in charge.
Maybe some of the promises that were made before, maybe as it relates to the tariff refunds, because it seems like the big boys got their money, but the little guys still struggling. But I digress. You know, and it's interesting what the Chairman just said because when we talk about fraud, notice that a lot of the other witnesses specifically talked about registration. They didn't necessarily talk about the actual act of voting. They talked about voter registration.
And one of the distinctions that I think you were trying to bring out, and I think the Chairman may ask you about in your testimony, is when we talk about criminality, it always has to do with what we call a mens rea, the mentality, right? And so if there was an error or a glitch because of a system, then why is it that we're having a hearing about the people that somehow were involved in the glitch? If there is a problem, I want us to fix the problems, let me be clear, because I think that's what we're supposed to do. But it seems like we should have a hearing on whoever it is that did the software and figure out what went wrong because when we talk about criminality, it should be about the intent, kind of like when the President intentionally told people, just do this for me and I'll give you some money. Sounds like a bribe.
Or when he intentionally told people, if that don't work, then cheat like hell. I just want to be clear that intent is what we look at when we look at criminality, we don't look at mistakes. And the fact that someone was added to the rolls mistakenly doesn't necessarily make them a criminal. But I know people are going to talk about the fact they ain't citizens and so they demons anyway, so you know, whatever. That's what they put out there.
But the irony of holding a hearing on election integrity chaired by a member who voted against certifying the 2020 election and signed an amicus brief to overturn the election, and then inviting one of the principal architects of the fake elector scam where people were actually convicted in their individual states for the fake elector scam to serve as a witness is an interesting strategy. But I won't judge it. It's kind of like having the people who are in the Epstein files being in charge of releasing the Epstein files. You know, but again, I digress. Here's what I can guarantee.
The main issue on the mind of people in New Jersey, and I've been there, so you know, I've talked to some of your people, is the cost of living crisis caused by Republican policies. The average price of gas in New Jersey is up 41.2 percent since Trump took office. Energy costs, groceries, rents, and diesel are all up across the state of New Jersey because of Trump's illegal war and tariffs. The average cost of childcare for two children in New Jersey is almost forty thousand dollars. More than 13,000 people in New Jersey filed bankruptcy between April 2025 and March of 2026, and 44,000 families are losing food assistance.
Yet Republicans are focused on pleasing the President instead of having... offering help to hardworking families in New Jersey. Mr. Richer, you've described this as MAGA exhibitionism. And I agree. They've made claims that are blatantly untrue and supported the President's actions, which many courts have said were unlawful. So I want to play a game of rhetoric or reality.
Mail-in vote leading leads to more voter fraud, rhetoric or reality?
Rhetoric.
Jasmine Crockett
If Congress passed the SAVE Act, the mishap in New Jersey would have never happened.
Rhetoric.
The 2020 election was rigged.
False.
Jasmine Crockett
You like, I ain't even saying that's rhetoric, that's just a lie, got it. More than 200,000 non-citizens illegally registered to vote.
Jasmine Crockett
Now, in his written testimony, Mr. Finley argues that if Congress passed the SAVE Act, it would have prevented the voter roll mishap in New Jersey. You argue that that perspective is incorrect. Why?
Stephen Richer
Again, we have documented proof of citizenship in Arizona, yet we had a similar issue because there was a, again, a software glitch between the state motor vehicle division and the voter registration system. In New Jersey, these people, we knew that they were not citizens. By providing documented proof of citizenship at the point of registration, they still would have been marked as not citizens, but then that box turned into that they were citizens. That's the problem, that's what New Jersey needs to fix, and that's what I assume they're investigating.
Jefferson Van Drew
Thank you. So I'm going to yield five minutes to myself, and I'm going to try to bring this conversation back home. My good friends on the other side have talked about a lot today, very little of it to do with the real problem at hand, that illegal people were voting in New Jersey elections, and not just one or two of them. They've talked about the tariffs, they've talked about refunds, they've talked about Iran, they've talked about the 2020 election, they've talked about January 6th, they've talked about Doge, they've talked about algae, they've talked about Epstein, they've talked about, you know, a whole gamut of stuff because nobody wants to talk about this, but I do. We want to talk about this.
Here's the real nub of this issue. New Jersey knew in 2024 that something was wrong and illegals were registered and were voting. Didn't do anything about it. They knew in 2025, and in 2026 they knew and then did finally reveal it because the Department of Homeland Security put a lot of pressure on them to get these records and to know what exactly happened. That's the real issue.
You know, I remember, I've talked about this before, and quite frankly my friends on the other side said to me, there's nothing to see there, there's not any illegal people voting anywhere, there's no illegal people being registered to vote. Almost 7,000 that we know, and there really could be a lot more, and I'm going to ask some questions that will lead to that. I was told I was a conspiracy theorist, so were many of us who had these thoughts. I know there's a lot of crazy statistics out there, but let's really get down to a couple really important points. I always like to get down to the basics, what really matters here.
And Mr. Finley, I'm going to start with you, I'm going to try to give everybody a chance. Can one vote make a difference, and were there, if you don't know the answer tell me, were there elections in New Jersey in either 2024, 2025, or 2026 so far where a few votes made a difference, where somebody won or lost by a few votes?
Todd Finley
Yes, one vote can make a difference, and in 2025 there were at least three races where they were decided by one vote or less.
Jefferson Van Drew
And do we know of the hundreds who voted illegally where they voted, in what municipalities, in what towns, in what districts? Do we have an information? I asked for it, I didn't receive it. Maybe one of you have that info, do you? No, nobody has it.
We don't know. So the reality is, in a state which has a lot of little towns where there are close elections, that it is very possible that whether it's a school board election, a fire district election, whether it's a general election, whether it's a primary election, we could have in New Jersey a situation where somebody's right to elected office was taken away because somebody voted illegally. That's a reality. Now we'd like to see the numbers and know if it's true, but that is the reality. All the other crap doesn't matter.
This matters. Mr. Reamer and Mr. Sena, Sena, I want to pronounce your name.
Sena, you had it right.
Jefferson Van Drew
Sena, I'm sorry, okay, Sena. When they filled that out, when they fill out in the way that it was with the motor voter, and they said and they asked are you legal or are you a legal citizen of the United States? The people, the good people that filled out and told the truth did what they did. And by the way, they it wasn't that they were changed to being legal, they just went on and registered them anyhow, but they did what they did. Is it possible that some lied and said that they were legal but they were not?
Mr. Sena.
Anthony Senna
It's certainly possible, and I think that that's a knowable fact because every person on the voter rolls can their eligibility can be determined today if with the appropriate information.
Jefferson Van Drew
Right, but it can, but the bottom line is when they just fill out a lot of people don't know that, they could have absolutely lied. We only know the people who were honest enough to say that they were illegal. We don't know other people that may have been illegal and said they were legal. So the chances are, Mr. Reamer, what do you think, the number could be a lot higher or could be higher?
Absolutely.
Speaker 16
This is the stuff we want to get to. This is what we asked the governor for.
Justin Riemer
No, absolutely, Chairman, and that's the underlying problem with having an honor system for registering voters, including in a place where just a few minutes before they're asked to register to vote they had to provide some type of documentation.
Jefferson Van Drew
Which they should, yeah. This is the reality. This is what this hearing is about. We're all over the politics and every no, we want to make sure only legal people are voting. Mr. Sena, last question, are you aware of any public records received about this case of non-citizens registering to vote in New Jersey?
I know that you are, but.
Yes, I am.
Yeah. And what do these records show?
Anthony Senna
There are records, as I think I mentioned, from Hudson County and Bergen County, two of the most populated counties in the state, which show that people registered before the time period and after the time period that was mentioned by the state government.
Jefferson Van Drew
So what you're telling me is the problem could be a whole lot bigger than we really know because they don't want to turn over the official documents.
Anthony Senna
It absolutely could, and I think these records, which anybody can review under our open public records law, demonstrate that.
Jefferson Van Drew
Thank you, I yield back. I recognize the gentleman from the great state of Kansas.
Derek Schmidt
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and appreciate your calling this hearing today, appreciate our witnesses all being here. I was listening carefully before I got in the room, watching the hearing while I was working on another matter, and then been listening carefully since I've been in here, and appreciate the focus on the topic of the hearing, which is the conduct or reported conduct in New Jersey. I want to ask questions that relate to the policy issues presented here, but they arise in the context of my home state in Kansas. We've had somewhat different experience but the same types of dynamics in play both in our public discourse and in our election integrity enforcement provisions.
We've had a handful of, I'll characterize them as voter fraud prosecutions, persons voting without being eligible that have resulted in conviction. It's been a relatively small number, but there have been cases. There was a case that received quite a bit of attention within the past couple of years from the rural part of Southeast Kansas, individual ultimately pledged guilty. He was known in the community, he was liked in the community, he was a green card holder, he was not a citizen of the United States. He had nonetheless registered and he had voted repeatedly and ultimately admitted to that conduct and last I checked was in removal proceedings.
I don't know if that's still the case, I haven't checked. And I would ask Mr. Chairman if I could insert in the record a report on that case from the Department of Homeland Security.
Without objection.
Derek Schmidt
We had a case just this week, just to illustrate sort of the ongoing nature. The headline from the USCIS announcement was Peruvian alien indicted for illegally voting. That's a Wichita case. I believe it's the case that's another green card holder, but I could be mistaken on that fact. But in any event, enforcement matters are ongoing.
Mr. Chairman, I'd ask to insert that in the record as well. And I'm sure it will be inserted without objection.
Without objection.
Derek Schmidt
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I guess I'd just ask maybe kind of backing up to the biggest principles here. I'm going to ask each of you, would you agree or disagree with the principle that only citizens of the United States should be allowed to vote in our federal elections? Mr. Finley?
I agree 100%.
Mr. Rymer?
Yes, Congressman.
Mr. Senna?
Agree.
Senna, Sina?
Senna, you have it.
Senna, thank you very much. Mr. Richer?
Agree.
Derek Schmidt
Very good. Would you agree or disagree with the principle that only citizens of the United States should be allowed to vote in our state elections? Mr. Finley?
I would agree.
Agree.
Agree.
Derek Schmidt
And lastly, perhaps not surprisingly, would you agree or disagree with the principle that only citizens of the United States ought to be allowed to vote in our local government elections? Mr. Finley?
I agree.
I agree.
Agree.
Agree.
Derek Schmidt
Very good. There are obviously, as I understand from news reports, some local jurisdictions that have made the policy choice to allow persons who are not citizens of the country to vote in their elections. I presume from your answers, and speak up if I'm drawing too much, that you all would all four of you be in disagreement with those policy choices by those local units in various states. Is that correct?
Correct.
Correct.
Derek Schmidt
Very good. Then let me ask you this, with respect to all those three levels of government and that principle that only citizens of the United States ought to be voting in any of our elections, would you agree or disagree with the idea that there ought to be enforceable mechanisms to determine whether an individual is in fact a citizen when they're voting? Mr. Finley?
I agree there should be.
Absolutely.
I think it can work.
Derek Schmidt
Very good. Then I think there's wide agreement on all those topics. It seems to me Republicans and Democrats, at least in my state, agree on those principles. In fact, our state was one of the first to adopt both photo identification, not the first, but one of the early adopters, and documentary proof of citizenship upon registration. We adopted the latter at least, maybe the former, I can't remember the timeline on the former, but we adopted the latter in 2011.
Our legislature did it, it was non-controversial, Republicans and Democrats voted for it. Our current Democrat governor was a member of the state senate, she voted for it, the Democrat minority leader voted for it in both the House and in the Senate. It later became controversial after it was adopted and after it became a political debate as opposed to a debate about how we ought to structure a program that confirms citizenship to enforce the principles that each of you has agreed to. And I guess I just I would ask all of you, bottom line as succinctly as you can, what should we do? I mean, if our friends on the other side don't want us to ask for documentation of either citizenship or of proof, what should we do?
Mr. Richer, I'll start with you since you said it can be done, what should we do if we're not going to do this?
Stephen Richer
Reform the, I think one, we need to be honest about the facts on the ground and that was the object of my testimony.
But then I think we should reform, consider reforming the NVRA to allow states to have more discretion, to allow them to be the laboratories of democracy. And some states have already done this like my home state of Arizona, like Georgia and others.
Derek Schmidt
But don't let them have non-citizens voting in local elections or other elections.
Stephen Richer
Correct, Arizona has a documentary proof of citizenship requirement and does not allow non-citizens to participate in local elections.
Anthony Senna
Amend the National Voter Registration Act to establish a clear standard for list maintenance practices.
Justin Riemer
I agree. I would narrow in on the DMV processes because it's where a majority of Americans register through the DMV. And as we've explained, it's the place where you should be able to verify the eligibility of these people most easily, but we don't do it. And it should be an easy thing to do and I would hope would get bipartisan support.
Todd Finley
Agreed, there needs to be a baseline for states. If they're not going to implement their own baseline, then the federal government needs to through the mechanisms that they've described.
Thank you all. Mr. Chairman, thank you and thank you for your indulgence.
Jefferson Van Drew
Thank you and that was a good line of questioning and I appreciate it. See, I mean we all think there's certain things that should be done and need to be done. With that, I will recognize the ranking member of the Committee of the Whole.
Jamie Raskin
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Richer, you're a Republican, is that right?
Jamie Raskin
And you were the senior elected official overseeing elections in Maricopa County where more than two million people live, is that right?
Jamie Raskin
2.5 million registered voters, okay. In the 2020 election, when we get always the hysteria and hullabaloo around this, Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani made the wild claim that 250,000 illegal aliens voted in Arizona. Was that true? Was there any evidence to support that?
There was no evidence to support that.
So what was it based on when he said that?
Stephen Richer
I don't know. Again, Arizona has, it is one of the states that has documentary proof of citizenship requirement and I have never seen anything to support those numbers.
Jamie Raskin
All right. Why, you have participated at the Cato Institute in systematic academic research documenting that this is a trivial problem at best across the country. Why do we always hear claims about it at election time?
Stephen Richer
I think because it's politically expedient, because it stokes fears and it grabs attention. But I think we need to be, we can have public policy conversations about the topic, but we need to be honest about the facts on the ground. And the facts are the ground that every time a state or local government audits their voter rolls for non-citizens, yes, they find a handful, but it's a fraction of a fraction of a percent. And I therefore think it's a straw man and a bit in bad faith to say that people are saying no non-citizens are ever registering or are voting. But what we're saying is that every single investigation, including by this federal government, it's a fraction of a fraction of a percent.
Jamie Raskin
Okay. Our colleague, the former Attorney General, asked a series of questions about non-citizen voting. I just want to pursue that line of questioning for a second. Do you believe that non-citizen corporate shareholders should be able to vote as shareholders in shareholder corporate elections for American corporations, Mr. Finley?
Speaker 28
Well, I'm talking about foreigners voting in shareholder corporate elections.
Okay, Mr. Reimer.
Speaker 34
Congressman, I've literally never thought about that in my life. I couldn't just off the cuff tell you.
Jamie Raskin
Well, you know that there's billions of dollars of private corporate stock in American corporations owned by foreign governments, foreign businesses, foreign nationals. Do you think they should be able to participate in American corporate shareholder elections?
Justin Riemer
I think it's a very different thing than deciding who our leaders are, what our policies are, what our tax policies are and all of that. So I suppose if I'm put on the spot, I would say yes.
In corporate.
Anthony Senna
That's a question I didn't think I was going to be asked today. I'm not a corporate lawyer. I really don't know what goes on in corporate governance, but you know, I think that the people who are the ones that are paying the bills should be the ones that have a say in what goes on and how the money is spent.
Jamie Raskin
Yeah. You know that that was the basis for why the Republican Party, for example, was a big champion of non-citizen voting in municipal elections, in local elections in America. It was a common practice when we had a property requirement for voting as a suffrage requirement. But Mr. Richer, how about you? Do you think that foreigners who own American corporate stock should be able to participate in shareholder derivative corporate elections?
Jamie Raskin
Okay. So now let me just go back one more time and maybe I'll start with you, Mr. Richer. If a corporation's going to use its Citizens United rights to spend millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in elections, should the corporation or the CEO who controls the corporation at that point have such a right if it also has money coming in from foreign sources like governments, corporations and foreign nationals?
Speaker 32
I think that I believe that money is speech and that that right shouldn't be infringed.
Jamie Raskin
Well, but you know that foreigners don't have a right to vote in American elections. That's what this hearing is all about, right? And so you're saying that those foreigners should have a right in some cases to have much more influence over the political process by putting money into a corporation that then converts that into campaign cash.
Speaker 26
I'm getting a little out of my depth here, but yeah, that's the general principle.
Jamie Raskin
Mr. Senna, what do you think? Should a corporation be able to spend money in our politics if say even a majority or all of its money is coming from foreign sources in terms of foreign corporate ownership? Because there's nothing that stops an American registered corporation from having 100% of its shares owned by foreigners.
Anthony Senna
I think that there's probably a legal way to skin that cat and have appropriate restrictions on the injection of foreign money into corporations and speech similar along the lines of other federal laws.
Jamie Raskin
So you're saying you do think it would be a problem to have foreign money involved in political campaigns through corporate spending.
Anthony Senna
No, not necessarily, but I think that I'm a little bit out of my depth on the topic on that topic. But I think that there's probably a legal way to address those issues that is not something I'm prepared to discuss.
Justin Riemer
I think the biggest foreign money problem that we have right now in our politics is through people like Hansjörg Wyss and George Soros and states have actually successfully prevented foreign influences from being able to.
Jamie Raskin
What did you think about Mr. Yeah. How did you feel about Mr. Kremlin paying for the wedding festivities of the son of the President of the United States? Hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. Did you have a problem with that?
I'm not sure which which you're even talking about.
Did you read the newspaper today?
I was I was preparing for my testimony.
Speaker 36
All right, I'll send it to you. You might hear some conversation out on the campaign trail.
And Mr. Finley, what about you?
Jefferson Van Drew
Gentlemen, I will recognize the gentleman, Mr. Finley, and then the time is expired.
Todd Finley
I think we need to be concerned about foreign funding of elections. I think we need to look into what is happening with corporations, but as my colleague Mr. Reimer said, there's a lot happening with nonprofit organizations that is happening across the country. States are successfully banning, and that's what we need to keep an eye on for right now.
Jamie Raskin
Thank you, Mr. Finley. Mr. Chairman, I just want to say that George Soros is a US citizen and perhaps we could apologize to him for describing him as a foreigner. I didn't know if Mr. Reimer was aware of that.
Speaker 21
There is a lot of foreign money coming in to fund progressive causes like ballot initiatives and other policy making at the state level.
Justin Riemer
Gotcha. How do you feel about 400 million dollar jets coming in from Qatar to the President of the United States? Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Speaker 25
Ranking member, I've given you a lot of leeway. You know, I mean, real, I got to be one of the nicest chairmen around, right?
Speaker 24
Okay. All right. So I think Mr. Jordan was going to try to make it, I think he got held up, so this is going to conclude today's hearing. We thank our witnesses, we do thank you. I know your time is...
Oh yes, I'm sorry, I recognize the gentleman from Kansas.
Derek Schmidt
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, just before you close the hearing down, if I could ask unanimous consent to include several documents in the record. One titled 75,000 non-citizens called for jury duty in New Jersey each year. One titled aliens charged with illegally voting in a federal election and making false statements while applying for US citizenship. One titled it's the honor system, New Jersey's non-citizen voter registration brings private worries into the open. And one titled New Jersey accidentally registers 6,600 non-citizens to vote years ago, Governor says.
Without objection.
Jefferson Van Drew
And that concludes today's hearing. We thank our witnesses for appearing before the subcommittee on oversight. Without objection, all members will have five legislative days to submit additional written questions for the witnesses or additional materials for the record. Without objection, this hearing is adjourned.