Shirley Emehelu, the acting secretary of state for New Jersey, has been hit with a congressional subpoena to answer questions about the Garden State’s scheme that allowed 6,600 noncitizens to register to vote.
U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil of the committee on House Administration, Jim Jordan of the committee on the Judiciary, Laurel Lee of the subcommittee on Elections and Jeff Van Drew of the subcommittee on Oversight dispatched the letter calling for an explanation of why the state failed to adequately respond to earlier written requests for details of the problem.
The members of Congress explained it was the state’s Department of State that “failed to produce sufficient documents responsible to the committees’ oversight requests concerning New Jersey’s registration of approximately 6,600 noncitizens to vote between June 2023 and June 2024.”
Scoop: U.S. House Judiciary Committee subpoenas the @GovSherrillNJ administration over the improper registration of 6,600 noncitizens to vote in New Jersey. GOP lawmakers accused the state of withholding records.
https://t.co/MHlkT9i0fV
— David Wildstein (@wildstein) October 21, 2026
“These ineligible voter registrations raise concerns about the application of federal law in New Jersey as it pertains to accurate voter registration, as well as the effect that New Jersey’s failure to identify and remove noncitizens from its voter rolls has on the civil liberties of American voters and their ability to elect their representatives,” the letter said.
The subpoena follows multiple requests and conversations during which the state failed to provide adequate answers.
The committees first sought information from the state on Aug. 3, but, “To this day, the department’s response has been inadequate. The department has produced only 12 total documents, and it has not produced any documents that explain how the alleged software error resulting in the registration of noncitizens was discovered or why noncitizens remained on the voter rolls until 2026—two topics about which the committees specifically inquired.”
The state has blamed the problem on a computer system error, while the software company that developed the program said that was not the case, and that it was state officials’ actions that put the ineligible names on the voter lists.
The state’s failure, the letter warned, “has impeded the committees’ ability to conduct oversight and consider legislative reforms.”
State officials, the letter charged, repeatedly have claimed “privilege” in refusing to cooperate.
In a subsequent conversation, “the department’s counsel once again raised unspecified privilege issues to explain the failure to comply with the committees’ requests. As before, counsel did not explain with specificity how the privileges may apply to potentially responsive documents or commit to the prompt production of unprivileged documents, and declined to provide to a timeline for any future productions. The department’s refusal to engage with specificity has unnecessarily impeded the committees’ oversight and significantly delayed the production of responsive documents.
The letter explained, “Pursuant to the Rules of the House of Representatives, the committees have jurisdiction to conduct oversight of matters concerning elections, civil liberties, criminal law, and U.S. national security to inform potential legislative reforms, such as, in this case, whether New Jersey’s improper registration of thousands of noncitizens and failure to remove these individuals from voter rolls in a timely fashion exposes shortcomings in existing federal election laws and undermines the civil liberties of American citizens.”
WorldNetDaily previously reported state officials, including Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, were refusing to divulge critical information about the issue so members of the House Administration and Judiciary Committees called on the software vendor who provided the code for New Jersey to deliver those answers instead.
According to a report at Just the News, members of Congress want from software provider IDEMIA North America all documents and communications related to the issue.
NEW: Chairmen @Jim_Jordan, @RepBryanSteil, @Congressman_JVD, and @RepLaurelLee sent a letter to software company IDEMIA requesting information regarding New Jersey registering thousands of noncitizens to vote.
Using IDEMIA’s software, noncitizens noted they weren’t citizens but… pic.twitter.com/1yNlLHStTl
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) August 11, 2026
Exclusive: Lawmakers demand records from software vendor over foreign voter registrations in NJ https://t.co/hUf6WBZrr2
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) August 11, 2026
The software company issued a statement correcting Sherrill, explaining the software provided to the state the names of those ineligible to be registered to vote, and officials allowed those names anyway.
Congress demands details of New Jersey voter-registration catastrophe from software vendor
