Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said the discovery that roughly 6,600 noncitizens were mistakenly made eligible to vote in New Jersey does not justify passing the SAVE America Act, the federal voter identification bill championed by President Donald Trump.
«Nothing in the SAVE Act would have prevented a clerical error like we've seen in Texas and Oregon and New Jersey,» Booker said. «We've got to protect our voting systems.»
New Jersey Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced last week that the state had removed roughly 6,600 noncitizens from its voter rolls, people who had been erroneously added ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Sherrill blamed the problem on a «serious software error» in New Jersey's Motor Vehicle System and said she immediately ordered an investigation and the removal of all affected noncitizens.
The disclosure comes as Trump has been hounding Senate Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, with some GOP members hesitant and Democrats overwhelmingly opposed. Booker, who has called the legislation a «massive voter suppression bill,» repeated that criticism as the New Jersey case became a talking point for voting-integrity advocates.
«It would stop millions of Americans from voting,» Booker said of the SAVE Act. Democrats opposing the measure argue that requiring all voters to present citizenship documentation in person would prevent many eligible citizens from casting ballots.
Booker defended New Jersey's handling of the situation, saying state officials moved quickly to address the error. «We take this very seriously in New Jersey,» he said. «People are stepping up.» He added: «We have a governor that's saying this is unacceptable. We're gonna make sure that we get to the bottom of it. People need to be held accountable.»
Despite his opposition to the SAVE Act, Booker told Fox News Digital that election requirements «should always have proof of citizenship for voting.» But he argued such requirements should be handled at the state level, even in federal elections. «The states, as the Constitution says, should handle their voting when there's problems or violations of the law. People should be prosecuted,» he said.
There is currently no national standard for identifying or reporting errors like the one seen in New Jersey, which makes it nearly impossible to analyze how widespread such problems are. The lack of a national standard means voter roll errors are caught, investigated and corrected differently from state to state, limiting the ability of election officials and researchers to gauge the scale of the issue. Republicans in favor of the SAVE Act argue the legislation would help resolve and expose such problems.
«We're going to handle the problems in New Jersey, but I hate how it's being weaponized by some people to advance schemes that actually would hurt Americans,» Booker said.
New Jersey is one of several states where noncitizens have recently been flagged in voter registration systems. Booker pointed to similar clerical errors in Texas and Oregon in arguing that the problem is not tied to the absence of a federal voter identification requirement.
