New Jersey officials said Tuesday that a Motor Vehicle Commission software error improperly registered about 6,600 noncitizens to vote over a one-year period, with fewer than 400 ultimately casting ballots before the registrations were removed.

The error occurred between June 2023 and June 2024, nearly three years before Gov. Mikie Sherrill took office, according to her administration.

State officials said the affected individuals were applying for driver's licenses or identification cards and explicitly answered "no" when asked whether they were U.S. citizens. Despite that, the MVC's voter registration system added them to the state's voter rolls.

"Through no fault of their own, the system registered them," Sherrill said in a statement obtained by the New Jersey Globe.

The disclosure comes just five days after President Donald Trump warned during a prime-time address that New Jersey had tens of thousands of noncitizens registered to vote.

Trump said as many as 35,152 non-citizens were on the state's voter rolls and estimated roughly 250,000 were registered across New Jersey, California, Nevada, and Pennsylvania.

Sherrill said she became aware of the problem last week and immediately ordered an investigation and the removal of anyone improperly registered during the affected period.

"I also ordered the removal of any residents from our voter rolls who were erroneously added between June 2023 and June 2024," she said. "The new MVC administrator that I appointed has begun the process of replacing the vendor responsible for administering the system."

The vendor, IDEMIA, provides digital identity and biometric technology for government agencies, including TSA PreCheck enrollment.

According to Sherrill, the state has already removed the erroneous registrations.

"Our preliminary analysis shows fewer than 400 individuals who were newly registered for the first time because of the error voted," she said. "They were registered as Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters and were scattered across the state."

The administration has not said which elections those ballots were cast in or whether they affected the outcome of any races.

The New Jersey Globe reported the registration errors occurred while Latrecia Littles-Floyd served as acting MVC chief administrator under then-Gov. Phil Murphy. The outlet also reported that Littles-Floyd was involved in a separate MVC error that temporarily removed eligible U.S. citizens from the voter rolls and resisted efforts to correct the issue.

It remains unclear whether she or other Murphy administration officials knew about the software problem.

"I am appalled by the reckless failures that allowed this to happen, and the lack of transparency shown by those in charge at the time," Sherrill said. "This failure didn't occur under my watch, but accountability starts now."

While pledging to safeguard election integrity going forward, Sherrill also took aim at Trump over his repeated concerns about election security.

"The difference is simple: when we find a problem, we don't hide it, deny it, or invent conspiracies," she said. "We investigate it, we fix it, and we tell the public. That's what accountability and good governance look like, and that's exactly what my administration is doing."