When I heard that roughly 6,600 people who were not American citizens were registered to vote in New Jersey ahead of the 2024 election because of a software glitch, I felt a familiar sense of dread.
It wasn’t just because having ineligible voters on the rolls is concerning and never should have happened. It’s because despite what President Donald Trump would have you believe — with his unfounded claims of mass voter fraud — there is absolutely no evidence that these kinds of irregularities are the result of any organized effort to influence our election results.
For Trump, this was not a coding error. It was evidence that America’s elections have been corrupted and the only way forward is to pass the SAVE America Act, a measure that would make it more difficult for many people to vote and which would represent the biggest ever federal intrusion into state control over elections.
“These are just the ones that got caught,” the president wrote — again, without any evidence — in a social media post urging passage of the measure. “The real numbers will prove to be many times this amount.”
That kind of rhetoric is the exact opposite of what our electoral system needs. Election fraud, administrative mistakes, and other voting irregularities deserve careful investigation, not fearmongering. I know this firsthand.
Before joining The Inquirer, I worked at the Philadelphia City Commissioners where I investigated and identified real examples of voter fraud.
What I saw when I worked in the system — and what my reporting has shown in the years since I’ve left it — is that electoral fraud is exceedingly rare; that the public officials I worked with didn’t hide or ignore any problems; and that when mistakes are made, they are found, fixed, and handled transparently.
That last is exactly what New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill did on July 21 when she explained that because of an error at the state’s Motor Vehicle Commission, a computer system erroneously registered people who were not eligible. Officials said that the 400 or so people from that pool who voted lived throughout the state, were registered in both political parties, and there was no evidence that any election results were swayed by their participation.
For those who diligently follow election administration news here in Philadelphia, this story might have felt like a distant echo. That’s because nine years ago, something similar occurred here.
In 2017, Al Schmidt, who now leads voting statewide, was a Republican city commissioner in charge of voting in Philadelphia when he announced that an investigation had uncovered 220 people who were not American citizens on the city’s voting rolls.
As with the situation recently in New Jersey, the source of the problems back then was also traced to a computer glitch connected to the driver’s license process. Even though they were ineligible, the system still asked the affected people whether they wanted to register to vote.
Schmidt publicly stated what had happened without inflaming the situation, and pledged to protect people whose immigration status was now threatened by mistakes made by others. (He went as far as attending immigration hearings on behalf of some of those affected.)
That style of leadership — clear, non-alarmist, focused on solutions — mirrors what Sherrill is doing in New Jersey now.
It’s also worth noting that the Garden State is hardly alone in owning up to its errors. Earlier this year, Republican Auditor General Tim DeFoor released an audit of Pennsylvania’s system. Out of the 210,000 records his office examined, just one included an ineligible voter — a lapse blamed on human error, rather than any broader issue.
In Pennsylvania, the system worked. A mistake was found, identified, and corrected. Sherrill seems on the path to doing the same.
Unfortunately, the president wants to try to use New Jersey’s stumble for his own political gain — a cynical approach that makes it harder to be taken seriously when actual irregularities and malfeasance are discovered.
Disorganized crime
After he was released from federal prison in 1985, convicted over bribery charges stemming from the Abscam investigation, former U.S. Rep. Michael “Ozzie” Myers became a political consultant and adviser. Over the years, business began to flag, so Myers and his allies came up with a scheme in the mid-2010s.
Once the polls closed, poll workers would go into the booth and vote again, and again and again and again. Typically, these votes were for candidates running for positions at the very end of the ballot, like judges.
Schmidt became my boss in 2014 when I joined the City Commissioners Office. Initially, my job was preparing street lists (names and addresses of registered electors) and voter files for campaigns. I attended community events and meetings on behalf of the office, and compiled data and information for voter guides.
In retrospect, it would have been impossible to predict just how much interest people would soon have in elections. Back then, I could barely give away the guides.
In time, I began helping with investigations into voting irregularities. When my colleagues and I started investigating the source of the overvotes, it pointed to one man, Dom DeMuro, a South Philadelphia poll worker.
We compiled the evidence and referred the case to law enforcement. The FBI confronted DeMuro, who turned on Myers. Eventually, Myers, DeMuro, and another poll worker pleaded guilty to federal charges.
Found, identified, and corrected.
Small-time ruses like Myers’ are the face of “organized” voter fraud in this country, a few people trying to make an easy buck. There’s absolutely nothing in the SAVE America Act that could have stopped them.
Looking back, I shudder to think of what 2020 may have been like without the groundwork Schmidt laid over a decade. How Philadelphia could have melted under the spotlight as Trump hurled accusations of fraud and the eyes of the world turned to vote counters inside the Pennsylvania Convention Center.
For me, it was an unforgettable lesson in the grind that goes into making democracy work and also how difficult — and how rewarding — making positive change really is.
To ensure election security and that voting remains easy and accessible, our country needs more leaders like Schmidt and Sherrill — and fewer bomb throwers.
We don’t need any more false data points and baseless conspiracy theories. And we certainly don’t need the SAVE America Act, which would only increase the burden on ordinary voters — and wouldn’t fix a thing.
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