New Jersey’s voter registration glitch triggered a GOP and media meltdown. California tossing nearly 150,000 ballots drew silence

“Just ONE illegal vote cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin declared after New Jersey last week disclosed a voter registration software failure that led to fewer than 400 alleged noncitizens voting. 

The Trump administration and the GOP responded to New Jersey’s glitch with outrage. They immediately launched a federal probe, doubled down on calls to pass the SAVE America Act and threatened to issue congressional subpoenas to get to the bottom of the episode.

But by Mullin’s logic, shared by other administration officials, what happened in California should have been a much bigger scandal.

Last week, the state released data showing it rejected nearly 150,000 mail ballots in its recent primaries. The vast majority, all evidence suggests, were cast by valid voters.

This time — despite the exponentially larger numbers involved — there were no federal investigations, no national legislative push to ensure all lawfully cast ballots are counted and no threats of congressional subpoenas to determine how many eligible voters had their lawful ballots rejected.

Nor, it’s worth noting, did the Beltway media jump on the California news with anything like the same urgency it greeted the New Jersey disclosure. 

The two episodes aren’t identical. One involves people who may have been legally ineligible to vote; the other involves rejected ballots cast by legal voters.

But if an unlawful vote “cancels out” a citizen’s ballot, then an eligible citizen’s lawful ballot that goes uncounted presents the same concern. And it happens many thousands of times more frequently.

The striking disconnect is a stark reminder of the GOP’s — and, in truth, much of the legacy media’s — profoundly anti-voting approach to election policy: instances of illegal voting, though minuscule in number, are treated as DEF-CON 1-level crises. Cases of voter disenfranchisement, though extremely widespread and commonplace, are greeted with a shrug. 

On Friday, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) led 18 House Republicans in announcing plans for hearings to investigate the New Jersey software error, and said he was “absolutely exploring” congressional subpoenas. In the same announcement, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) called the mistake a “catastrophic and negligent betrayal of election integrity.” 

New Jersey Republicans separately called for a special legislative committee with subpoena power, a full voter roll audit, an end to automatic voter registration and an expanded federal investigation.

Between June 2023 and June 2024, roughly 6,600 people applying for driver’s licenses or identification cards told the state they were not U.S. citizens, but were registered anyway by state software. 

Sherrill promptly ordered the registrations removed, moved to replace the system’s vendor and launched an independent investigation.

Fewer than 400 of the affected people later voted in at least one election, according to Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D). The registrations resulted from government software overriding applicants’ truthful answers — not thousands of people falsely claiming citizenship. And officials have found no evidence that the error was the result of organized voter fraud or changed an election outcome.

In California, by contrast, county officials rejected nearly 150,000 mail ballots — the state’s highest rejection rate in more than a decade — from the June primary. 

More than 93,000 were rejected for being deemed too late. But voting advocates said they believed many of those ballots arrived within the state’s grace period, but were rejected because, due to U.S. Postal Service delays, they were postmarked after election day, despite being mailed on or before. Recent Postal Service changes have widened the gap between when USPS accepts an envelope and when it receives a postmark. 

The share of ballots that were tossed for lateness rose from 45% of all rejections in last fall’s special election to 63% in the June primary, according to Mindy Romero, founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy.

Over 50,000 more were rejected either because election workers determined that the voter’s signature did not match the signature on file, or because their envelopes lacked a signature. Evidence from past elections makes clear that the vast majority of these rejected ballots were cast by legitimate voters who were disenfranchised by an overly strict approach to enforcing the rules.

California designed its voting laws to prevent ordinary postal delays and administrative mistakes from costing people their votes. Every active registered voter receives a mail ballot, voters have opportunities to correct signature problems and ballots can arrive as many as seven days after Election Day if postmarked on time.

The contrast between the responses to New Jersey and California is especially striking because Trump and his allies were also quick to scrutinize California while its primary votes were still being counted. 

The president made unsupported fraud allegations about the state’s slow count, while the DOJ sent a federal observer to Los Angeles. 

Once the final data showed that nearly 150,000 mail ballots had not counted, however, no equivalent Republican mobilization followed.

The Trump administration and the GOP responded to New Jersey’s glitch with outrage. They immediately launched a federal probe, doubled down on calls to pass the SAVE America Act and threatened to issue congressional subpoenas to get to the bottom of the episode.