Report: Tens of Thousands of New Jersey Voter Registrations Are Duplicates and Missing Critical Information

By Ron Benvenisti. In a report published by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, (PILF), Tens of Thousands of New Jersey Voter Registrations Are Duplicates Missing Critical Information.

Note: This would have given Jack Ciattarelli close to 130,618,185 votes instead of 1,255,185 for a much closer race with Murphy at 1,339,471!

PILF recently alerted (1) the New Jersey Secretary of State (NJSOS) to what appears to be thousands of examples where registrants are stored in duplicate. Tens of thousands of other voter records were highlighted for missing or fictitious biographical information like dates of birth.

These represent current and future problems with voter roll list maintenance that the Garden State needs to address. To get to the root of the problems, PILF also filed a federal lawsuit (2) to access copies of list maintenance procedural guides after the NJSOS denied requests for fear of hacking risks. This brief summarizes the data issues raised with state officials.

2022 Findings

Same-Address Duplicate Registrations – 8,239 New Jerseyans managed to become registered twice or more under variations of their names. New Jersey’s voter registration system, like nearly every other studied by PILF, can be tricked into registering a person multiple times with extremely similar biographical data inputs at the same addresses. These serve as an administrative challenge to be resolved as we see more automation to vote-by-mail. Otherwise, “John Public” and “John Q. Public” could each vote once, while the actual John is voting twice.

The most common finding type, clerical/typographical error, can be as subtle as transposed letters. As an example, Julia Rose and Juila Rose are the same person, but she has duplicate registrations with unique voter identification numbers.

Findings also include quadruplicates (4x), pentuplicates (5x), and a sextuplicate (6x). With these definitions in mind, the findings per category are laid out in the following table.

Multiple Types of Errors in Voting Rolls

Type

Sets

Clerical/Typographical Error

3,011

Identical Duplicate

2,247

Married/Maiden Name Conflict

1,323

Multiple Issues

898

Middle Name/Initial Conflict

688

Triplicate

61

Quadruplicate

7

Pentuplicate

3

Sextuplicate

1

TOTAL

8,239

Two common first names were standouts, indicating a potential recurring, systematic error. Repeatedly, “Christopher” and “Jaqueline” were stored in duplicate with obvious clerical entry errors across the state. The pairings appeared as Christopher vs. Christoph and Jaqueline vs. Jacquelin. While the cause may be unknown at this time, this issue must be examined and addressed.

Administrative fixes such as these can legally occur up to the final days before the election without a federal safe harbor protection.

Finally, a subset within these duplicate findings evidences the possibility of duplicate vote credits assigned to some registrants during the 2020 General Election. Due to the aforementioned lack of disclosure regarding documents, PILF cannot reach a conclusion as to what the duplicate vote credits mean.

Registrants Aged 105+ Old 

There are 2,398 registrants showing dates of birth in 1917 or before across New Jersey. Given that the most recent average life expectancy data show to be 80.7 years in the state, the thousands of registrants aged well beyond 100 years deserve closer examination. (3) Potential causes include, but should not be limited to, incorrect date of birth or overlooked list maintenance opportunities.

One startling example of missed list maintenance opportunities is Patrick DePaola of Bayonne. He was born, according to the voter roll, on July 28, 1905. On June 2, 1927, he likely heard that the Yankees beat the Tigers with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig hitting 3 home runs! (4) He also registered to vote that day. He worked for 50 years as a printer for The New York Times. He died at the age of 105 on December 9, 2010. (5) In 2022, he was still showing as an ACTIVE registered voter in Hudson County.

Ocean County NOT Included

County

Count

Essex

8,064

Middlesex

5,601

Passaic

4,285

Union

3,115

Morris

2,064

33,572 Placeholder/Fictitious Dates of Birth

The largest finding in terms of volume of affected voter registration records involves placeholder or fictitious dates of birth. The voter roll purports to show an excess of 33,000 registrants without dates of birth indicating eligibility. To be clear, PILF does not conclude or suggest these are ineligible registrants, rather, PILF observes that these records simply do not demonstrate on their face to include an acceptable birthdate.

The most common placeholder/fictitious date in the voter roll is January 1, 1800 (displayed as “1800-01-01” in the actual data file).

PILF’s concerns with the finding are two-fold. The shortcomings in the retention of critical information like date of birth can put the onus on poll workers to try to complete the record at check-in. The longer-term concern is that a lack of birthdate information could complicate future list maintenance efforts.

6,863 Placeholder/Fictitious Dates of Registration

Thousands of records do not include an actual date of registration. The bulk of the flagged records distributed by birthdate across time are situated between 1941 and 1960. Finally, the registrants are overwhelmingly placed in Middlesex County, which accounts for 95 percent of the dataset.

906 Placeholder/Fictitious Dates of Birth AND Registration

There are 906 examples where the official voter roll extract cannot state when a registrant became registered, nor when they were born. These are almost exclusively in Middlesex County.

56 Dates of Birth from Centuries Ago and in the Future

PILF identified 56 records containing what appear to be typographical errors within date-of-birth fields. The vast majority of these records show dates from longer than a century ago, but some even stretch back to the time of the Byzantine Empire. The earliest date of birth belonging to an ACTIVE registrant is 956 A.D. (“0956-11-17” in the voter roll). The voter roll also includes registrants who claim to be born on a date in the future, such as January 14, 2028, and September 30, 2029.

PILF President J. Christian Adams maintains that “New Jersey has some explaining to do in how it collects and maintains basic voter information. As we have already demonstrated, PILF will pursue available remedies to correct often long- neglected government records.”

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12 COMMENTS

  1. If I add it all up, in all the categories, I get potentially 140,000 more for Eric Ciatterelli. Then he would be our Governor.

  2. Nowhere do they provide any proof that the duplicate people or the dead people voted twice. Just that they are registered twice.
    At the end of the day there is very low voter turnout, so it’s not statistically likely to change the results.
    Not to mention the glaring mistake on top of the article that claims the Jack Ciatarelli received over 130 million votes.

  3. I looked at the actual report and I don’t see the numbers you posted. Can you please tell me what page to find them on?

  4. The article lost all credibility when the “note” assumed that all the votes would have gone to Ciatarelli. I agree all voter rolls should be checked and corrected as needed, but when you cite a partisan groups research and then make a partisan assumption then all credibility is gone. Besides if activists or Reps know this they can alter the election tallies.

  5. Public Interest Legal Foundation is an ultra conservative organization with an agenda. Please spare me their rhetoric and show some data from a legitimate non political organization.TIA

Comments are closed.