Republicans wasted no time in going after Democrats when news broke that 6,600 noncitizens were erroneously registered to vote in New Jersey, casting the incident as evidence of rampant election fraud.
But Democrats, led by New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, are leaning hard into transparency on the issue — especially as the party has little ground available to lose in the midst of President Donald Trump’s aggressive push to tighten elections laws and claim more control from the states.
“It is the right thing to do — to be clear with the public about anything you find and to build trust in a system that generally works really well,” said Ben Olinsky, a senior fellow at the Democratic think tank Center for American Progress. “That is also the right strategy for dealing with someone who has repeatedly and habitually lied about elections in the form of Donald Trump.”