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.

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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.