Phil Murphy gives NJ Democrats one more kick in the teeth

And now Gov. Mikie Sherrill alleges that Murphy’s administration dropped the ball as the state Motor Vehicle Commission accidentally registered about 6,000 non-citizens to vote, with nearly 400 of them casting ballots.

Appearing in Trenton on Tuesday, a livid Sherrill, who is a Democrat like Murphy, lambasted her predecessor. The apparent goof happened for a year starting in June 2023 until it was fixed, but the people who were mistakenly registered were not taken off the rolls, according to Sherrill.

“It’s unacceptable that no one in the previous administration brought this to light, demanded accountability, or took action when it happened years ago,” she said.

The lack of accountability under Murphy’s reign should surprise no one. When questioned about obvious problems in state government — to name one, the near-impossibility of getting appointments for a Real ID as a federal deadline neared — the Murphy administration would respond by saying that critics were wrong, everything was working as intended, and any mistakes were because of ignorant plebes. When the New Jersey Monitor met with Murphy during his final days as governor, we asked him if he could name a single thing he would have done differently during the COVID crisis, when elected officials nationwide were making off-the-cuff decisions some would later say they regretted. Murphy could not name one. You can’t hold your administration accountable if you don’t think you did anything wrong.

Sherrill’s anger on Tuesday was also not a surprise. If the claims she made on Tuesday are true, Murphy not only left Sherrill with a massive mess to clean up and New Jersey with a black eye; he also made it harder for New Jersey Democrats, and potentially Democrats nationwide, to argue that Trump’s allegations of widespread voter fraud are wrong. Trump and Republicans are already citing New Jersey as ground zero for voter fraud and calling for investigations.

I do not believe Trump’s claims, even with the revelations Tuesday. If 400 non-citizens voted for president in New Jersey in 2024, that would have amounted to 0.0095% of ballots cast. If 6,000 voted, that would still be less than 1%. Down-ballot races are sometimes decided by a handful of votes, though if non-citizens vote in local races at the rate citizens do, the percentages there would be microscopic, too.

Still, Trump’s push to convince Americans that non-citizens are flipping election results — which is really just a personal crusade to convince America that he did not lose reelection in 2020 — has been strengthened thanks to incompetence in our state government. And for that, apparently, we can thank Phil Murphy.

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