Transcription
The legacy media should be ashamed of themselves for giving oxygen to this. That's suggesting somehow that what happened in New Jersey is proof of voter fraud. There was not voter fraud. It is proof of some conspiracy. There was no conspiracy. And that somehow, somehow, the solution to this is to let Donald Trump take over the voter rolls.
On April 28th, 2026, the state of Texas made a startling admission to the federal government. According to a letter sent by the Secretary of State, quote, "We are aware of instances in which state driver's license records inaccurately reflect a person's current citizenship status." In addition, we have learned of individuals who were mistakenly registered to vote due to clerical error by a voter registrar, even though they acknowledged on the voter registration application that they are not U.S. citizens. That's right. The state of Texas acknowledged what happens really everywhere. Some number of instances where clerical errors on the part of government officials mistakenly put someone on the voter rolls who shouldn't be, or just as often, or more often, puts someone who is supposed to be on the voter rolls off them.
I have been dealing with voter registration records for more than 30 years as a lawyer, as an advocate, as someone who litigates voting rights cases in court. And I'm here to tell you that it is not startling news. It is not breaking news. It is not something that should drive the national narrative that departments of motor vehicles make errors. That government workers, despite all of their best intentions, sometimes get it wrong. That large databases are not always entirely accurate. I mean, you've lived with this in your own lives. How many times have you found yourself with the wrong information on some database that you go and try to correct, and it's really complicated and hard? It may be something from the federal government where they spelled your name wrong. It may be something with a magazine you subscribed to or an email list you wound up on that you just don't seem to get yourself off of.
Big data can be really helpful to states. It can be really useful in making sure that people are registered, but it's not infallible. And I could give you instance after instance after instance where Republican-controlled states, where this federal government run by Donald Trump, has used big data to disenfranchise voters or otherwise make a mess of democracy.
Why do I raise this? Because right now, the Republican party is trying to sell you a narrative about what has recently happened in New Jersey that is frankly not fair to the people of New Jersey, to the people caught up in this, nor to the overall pro-democracy movement. So, in this episode, I'm going to walk you through what we know about what happened in New Jersey, talk about what happened in Texas and elsewhere, and then give you a frame of reference to think about all of this that frankly we're not hearing from the legacy media. This is going to be one of those journeys where you're going to need to sit back and enjoy the ride to get the most out of it. But before I get into it, what I need you to do as a favor to me is to become a Democracy Docket subscriber. As I said, Democracy Docket is the news platform I created in 2020 for precisely moments like this to keep you informed about what is happening to voting rights and elections in court and what Donald Trump and the Republican party is up to. The link to subscribe is on the screen in front of you. It's also in the description of this episode, or go to democracydocket.com/youtube.
So, let me quickly give you the background here. Okay, the state of New Jersey, like every state, has a series of forms you fill out when you register to vote. And they've got a number of vendors who take that information and put it into databases, and as a result of information getting put into those databases, various things happen. For example, you get a driver's license, you get a vehicle registration, you get license plates, right? Well, the other thing for those of you who have registered to vote at the Department of Motor Vehicles knows that you can be registered to vote based on how you answer a series of questions, based on how you fill out these various forms. I'm not going to get into the whole who did what to whom. Okay?
According to the governor of New Jersey, this was an error by the vendor to the Department of Motor Vehicles there. The vendor may have a different story. It really doesn't matter for our purposes. What we know is that about 6,000 people who are not U.S. citizens, who never claimed to be U.S. citizens, who never filled out a form and tried to prove that they were citizens. These are people who apparently checked a box, said, "I am not a U.S. citizen." Nevertheless, due to a snafu at the Department of Vehicles, again, whether it's because of the software, whether it's because of a vendor, whether it's because of a database, I don't know for sure. But as a result of some error, these people who frankly did nothing wrong wound up on the voter rolls. Okay? They were registered to vote in New Jersey because the software, someplace between them checking the box saying, "I'm not a U.S. citizen," they nevertheless got put on the rolls. That shouldn't happen. We can all agree that's a mistake. But even worse, apparently some smaller number of them, totaling in the hundreds. Again, this is all an evolving story, but a few hundred of them actually then cast ballots. Look, none of that should have happened. These folks should not have been put on the rolls. Once on the rolls, they should not have voted. This was a breakdown of systems. But what it was not is a conspiracy to commit voter fraud. Okay.
Again, these people flagged for the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles that they were not U.S. citizens. The SAVE Act, which Republicans have made a big deal about, you know, we need the SAVE Act, you know, because of what happened in New Jersey. The SAVE Act requires people to provide proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. I've done a lot of talking about this. I did a whole episode on this. I've written about this for Democracy Docket. I've spoken on TV about this. This will disenfranchise hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans if it becomes law. It will particularly negatively impact women who are married who change their last name. About 70% of women who are married wind up changing their last name. And because in order to prove citizenship, you need either an original birth certificate where the married name won't match the name on the birth certificate, or an unexpired passport, you're going to disenfranchise a lot of people, cause a lot of people confusion and heartburn because they won't be able to prove citizenship. Again, I've discussed this in prior episodes. But these people in New Jersey, these non-citizens, they weren't trying to prove citizenship. In fact, they were flagging for the state of New Jersey. They were not citizens. So nothing in the proof of citizenship requirement would have prevented the error that we saw here because these people checked the box that said, "I'm not a U.S. citizen." So there was no effort on their part to deceive anyone. To the contrary. Nor would a voter ID law have done anything because, as I've mentioned before, driver's licenses don't prove citizenship. And I've seen this reported in the legacy media, and they frankly get it wrong in too many instances because, you know, the both sides thing. Actually, in this instance, not even both sides. They're really frankly doing the stenography work of the Republican party. But it has nothing to do with whether New Jersey issues driver's licenses to undocumented people or not. Right? Like there's a suggestion that somehow maybe this is because New Jersey is too lax in who they issue a driver's license to. No. 45 states in the country issue Real ID driver's licenses that do not prove citizenship. Do not prove citizenship. Non-citizens can get those driver's licenses unless you are in one of five states that borders Canada. You cannot get a driver's license that proves citizenship. And by the way, even in those five states, it's not a Real ID driver's license. It's something called an enhanced driver's license. But if you're not in one of those five states, that Real ID driver's license, whether it is only given to people documented or people given who are documented and undocumented, is still going to a population of people who are not U.S. citizens. That is the reason why I again, I did a whole video on this. You should go back and check it out. We'll put a link here about how this effort to talk about ID at the polls is kind of all messed up. How's that for a good legal term, everyone? Because the Republicans are trying to conflate various pieces of this. And this New Jersey story is just the culmination of that effort to merge together various voter suppression techniques that Republicans have in mind and suggest that this is proof, this error at the Department of Motor Vehicles is proof that what the Republicans are trying to sell you is something other than voter suppression.
So these folks register, they check the box that says, "I'm not a U.S. citizen." An error is made. They are put on the rolls. That is not a conspiracy. That is an error. Then some number of them vote, and that is a mistake. That is unacceptable. Right? That shouldn't happen. Non-U.S. citizens are not eligible to vote in elections in New Jersey. They're not eligible to vote in any federal elections anywhere in the country. So that shouldn't have happened. But again, there's nothing about proving citizenship to register, which is what Republicans keep talking about, that would have fixed this. Nor would a requirement to show a New Jersey driver's license to vote have fixed this either because, after all, these people were at the Department of Motor Vehicles. They were getting driver's licenses. That wasn't the issue. They were going to have photo ID. That wasn't the issue. It was going to be state-issued photo ID. That wasn't the issue. It was going to have an expiration. It was going to have their address. It was going to have all of the things that Republicans say it has to have. And that's why they were at the Department of Motor Vehicles getting a driver's license. So conflating the driver's license requirement to vote, conflating that somehow with this error is just a lie. I mean, it's just a damn lie. And the legacy media should be ashamed of themselves for giving oxygen to this. That's suggesting somehow that what happened in New Jersey is proof of voter fraud. There was not voter fraud. It is proof of some conspiracy. There was no conspiracy. And that somehow, somehow, the solution to this is to let Donald Trump take over the voter rolls, right? I mean, that's ultimately where this quickly went.
This was quickly seized upon by a Department of Justice that is 0 and 16 in lawsuits to gain access to the most sensitive personal voting information that states maintain, the voter files. They are 0 for 16. They have lost seven cases before trial judges appointed by Donald Trump. They've lost the first case that went to the court of appeals, the Sixth Circuit. That is a conservative circuit, and they lost there as well. They have not yet won anywhere before any judge. So, you know, when I see, you know, the Department of Justice and people who work there, you know, posting on social media that it's a bunch of liberal judges, tell that to the seven judges appointed by Donald Trump. And that's before you get to the other conservative judges appointed by other Republican presidents.
The Constitution gives the states, not the president, the states the authority to set the time, place, and manner of federal elections. It gives Congress the ability to override the states in many instances through legislation. So, like one of the lies that we keep hearing, one of the things that Donald Trump and the administration and their supporters keep repeating over and over again, and which the legacy media is buying into way too often, is this idea, well, it's a federal election, and therefore the federal government, i.e., the administration, the executive branch, obviously has an important role to play here in safeguarding. Let me say it again. The U.S. Constitution gives states the authority to set the time, place, and manner of federal elections. It gives Congress the authority to pass legislation overriding the states. It does not give the president of the United States any authority, zero authority, not any authority anywhere to be found. Not whether he declares a state of emergency, not whether the state of New Jersey has a software glitch, not whether he doesn't like mail-in voting, it doesn't give him any authority. So when we start to look at agencies under his control, they don't have any authority either. Right? I mean, remember after all, it's this administration that keeps preaching the unitary executive theory. What is the unitary executive theory? It just means that everyone who works in the executive branch somehow is answerable to the president. Now, I'm not going to get into unitary executive theory because that's again a topic for another day. But it isn't that they have more authority than the president has. In fact, unitary executive theory is the opposite. They have exactly the authority of the president. And since the president has no authority over the way in which we hold elections in the United States, they don't have any authority to assert in this instance in New Jersey.
But I started this episode by talking about something other than New Jersey. And I want to go back to that. So I want to put up right in front of you a letter dated April 28th, 2026. It is on the letterhead of Jay Nelson, the Secretary of State. You see it says the state of Texas with the great seal of the state of Texas right there in the top, and it is addressed to Andrew Davidson, acting associate director, fraud detection and national security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. That sounds very important. The fraud detection and national security person at USCIS. Well, I wonder what she's writing about. Then it begins with the obligatory sucking up to Donald Trump. "The office of the Texas Secretary of State appreciates the efforts of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and other federal partners to ensure that non-U.S. citizens do not vote in our elections." How about that? They're very appreciative people in Texas. I have found the Republicans who run the state of Texas. They are always appreciative when I sue them. I mean, they're always like, "Thank you, Mr. Elias, for bringing to our attention that we constantly pass voter suppression laws that make it harder to vote for no reason other than to advantage Republicans, except the times we do it to discriminate against black and Latino voters. We appreciate your partnership." Okay, they never send me that letter, right? They always hate the fact that I sue them. They hate the fact that I call out their voter suppression efforts. So, they're not appreciative of my work, but they do seem very appreciative of the Trump administration. So, what do you think this is about? Because they're not just sucking up for no good. Well, I mean, after all, Republicans sometimes do suck up for nothing. But in this instance, they've got an ulterior motive for their sucking upness. And we got to go all the way down to sort of the bottom of the first page where we get to it. "We are aware of instances in which state driver's license records inaccurately reflect a person's current citizenship status." Well, that's kind of a polite way to put it, right? Like, we're aware that there are records and they inaccurately reflect a person's current citizenship status. Kind of passive voice, right? The records just kind of did this. But then we get to the big reveal in the very next sentence. "In addition, we have learned of individuals who were mistakenly registered to vote such as due to a clerical error by a voter registrar, even though they acknowledged on the voter registration application that they are not U.S. citizens." Okay.
So, the state of Texas in April sent a letter to the Trump administration. Very passive voice here, right? Like very passive voice. It's not clear like mistakes were made. But what they're saying is that there are individuals who acknowledged on their voter registration form that they were not U.S. citizens, who nevertheless were registered to vote. Geez, I wonder where I heard that before. Oh, that's right. That's what happened in New Jersey, right? That's what happened in New Jersey is people who went to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get a driver's license, filled out a form, checked the box that said they're not U.S. citizens, but nevertheless, due to clerical error, clerical error, they were registered to vote. I want to ask you whether you heard the legacy media report on this letter. Was there wall-to-wall coverage by the biggest news outlets about Texas DMV registering non-citizens to vote? Have you heard the Department of Justice condemn Texas? Are you reading on social media that, you know, right-wing influencers believe that there was voter fraud and a conspiracy to allow voter fraud in the state of Texas in April? Have you heard any of that? Or is the first time you're hearing about this letter right now on this podcast? Did it take Mark Elias, of all people, to inform you that the state of Texas made clerical errors that are the same as the clerical errors made in the state of New Jersey, but yet resulted in none of the outrage?
I started this episode by saying that voter databases are not perfect. No government database is perfect. No private database is perfect. And I started by saying to you, think in your own life about all the times you have been annoyed because some aspect of some database someplace is wrong. And more often than not, it is the result of clerical error. Right? It's not anyone trying to screw you. I mean, sometimes it's big corporations trying to screw you. Sometimes it's the big tech platforms trying to screw you, but more often than not, it's not that. It's just errors in these very large databases. You've got a lot of people filling out a lot of forms. You've got a lot of databases talking to a lot of other databases. And there are going to be errors made. There are going to be instances in which someone checks a box and it doesn't get recorded properly. And we ought to fix those things. And you know what, the governor of New Jersey, Mikey Cherfilus, that's what she's doing. The reason why you know about this is because the state of New Jersey has told us that this error was made and that they are fixing it. They're changing vendors, or they're changing software. They're doing whatever it is they need to do to fix this. Now, maybe if they had started with a suck-up to Donald Trump in a letter, this would be treated differently, but I don't think so. Because the right-wing conspiracy theorists, the election deniers, the vote suppressors, the Republican party, they see political advantage in beating up on a blue state like New Jersey, just like they saw an advantage in beating up on California when, frankly, all California was doing was counting its primary votes. I mean, Donald Trump was beating up on California. Jay Clayton, the head lead federal prosecutor in New York City, went on CNBC to cast doubt on the accuracy or the legitimacy of the vote counting in California's primary based on nothing. Zero. Nothing. Because it's a state run by Democrats. Someone should ask Mr. Clayton next time he's on TV, "Do you have something to say about Texas? Do you have something to condemn Texas for?" So, you want to condemn the governor and the Secretary of State and the Attorney General of Texas? No. Crickets. And you know what? The legacy media will never ask him about Texas because they're not interested in that narrative either. They're interested in this narrative that somehow in Democratic states something untoward maybe is happening. Why? Just look who owns these news outlets. Look who owns these media stations. I mean, CBS News, they covered the president's address after a day of hiding in conference rooms and then a head fake that they weren't going to do it, and then they did it in the end. And we all know why they did that. We don't need to pretend that it was independent news judgment or any of that nonsense.
Look, I started Democracy Docket because you deserve a fearless news outlet. You deserve to be told the truth without fear of any reprisal from this administration. Donald Trump has attacked me on social media. Donald Trump has attacked me in litigation. He sued me for racketeering. I fought. I won. He has issued executive orders and memorandums from the White House targeting me by name. He gave a speech at the Department of Justice calling me out and saying I'm a really bad person. I don't care what Donald Trump says. In fact, I wear his scorn as a badge of honor. And that is what has infused Democracy Docket. It is unapologetically pro-democracy. It is fiercely and fearlessly independent. But it is only supported by people like you. So look, I'm going to ask you again to become a Democracy Docket subscriber. You can do that by clicking on the link in front of you in the description of this episode or going to democracydocket.com/youtube. We only answer to you, but we need you to subscribe.
Now, look, this is not going to end with New Jersey. It's not going to end with California. It's not going to end with any of these blue states. In the coming days and weeks and months, Donald Trump is going to continue to lie about our elections. He's lied about voting by mail. He's lied about early voting. He's lied about dropboxes. He's lied about foreign interference. He's lied about voting equipment, right? He and of course, he lied about the 2020 election. He lies about everything. And his supporters, well, they just go along for the ride, and they amplify the lies, and they retell the lies, and they take administrative errors like what we saw in New Jersey and they blow them up, and they take administrative errors like what we saw in Texas and they ignore them because that is what they do, and that is what they are going to do between now and the midterm elections. I mean, it'll continue after the midterm elections, but I'm focused on between now and the midterm election. And so, what I need you to do is to arm yourself with the truth, right? Not to allow yourself to be caught up in these lies and not to yield ground to the election deniers. Look, I don't compromise with them because there is no middle ground between an arsonist and a firefighter. They're trying to burn down democracy. They are not trying to fix the DMV of New Jersey. They are trying to subvert the will of the electorate, not make our elections more efficient. They are not trying to prevent foreign interference in elections. Donald Trump has defunded the agencies that do exactly that, that prevent foreign interference in elections. They're not trying to make our election equipment more secure and better. Donald Trump fired the entire Election Assistance Commission, all of them. So, I don't seek compromise because I'm trying to put out the fires. I'm running from courtroom to courtroom trying to prevent them from burning the place down. I'm publishing on Democracy Docket. I'm writing, you know, several times a week on Democracy Docket. I'm doing this episode precisely because I need you too to be armed with the facts so that you don't feel the need to compromise with the vote suppressors and the election deniers, but rather you stand tall. You stand defiantly against the authoritarianism that we're up against.
So look, one of the new features that we have brought to this fight at Democracy Docket in the effort to build community is a subreddit. Yeah, I know you're thinking, "Well, that isn't what I expected. I expected something different." Well, here's the thing. Different people want different things from Democracy. Some of you, I think most of you like to get our newsletters, which is why I've asked you to subscribe to those. Some of you become premium members, and that's even better. You help keep the organization financially going, and you get some additional content. Some of you join our live virtual events, and that's what you like, and many of you enjoy this format because it's a good way for you to get information. But we also heard that people who are fed up with the traditional social media platforms where Democracy still posts on Instagram, and on Facebook, and on BlueSky, and on Twitter, and on TikTok. Some of you have said you want the community that you can get from Reddit. And Reddit is a platform that is uniquely good at building community. And so we have started a subreddit. We're going to put the link to that as well in the description of this episode. So if you are a Redditor or you just want to check it out, click on that link as well. It's going to be a big fight in the days and weeks to come. But I wouldn't want to do it without all of you in it with me. So, pick your way of engaging with the Democracy team and the Democracy Docket content, and I will see you next time.