Dhillon hinted that aggressive moves in the case were coming on Tuesday, posting to X to “stay tuned” after saying the DOJ has already been attempting to help the state “avoid exactly such ‘errors.’”

Hans von Spakovsky, a former DOJ attorney and senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, said the disclosure could provide the DOJ with evidence that New Jersey failed to maintain accurate voter rolls as required by federal law.

“If I was still a lawyer at the Justice Department, I would immediately produce evidence of this error and mistake that occurred,” von Spakovsky told the Washington Examiner.

He said the department could argue to the court: “Look, they are not correctly maintaining their voter list the way federal law requires, and it’s just another piece of evidence that shows that we need access to the list to see what other problems and mistakes they’ve made.”

Sherrill announced Tuesday that a defect in the state Motor Vehicle Commission’s registration system affected noncitizens who applied for driver’s licenses or identification cards between June 2023 and June 2024.

The roughly 6,600 applicants indicated through an electronic keypad that they were not U.S. citizens, but the software allegedly disregarded their answers and registered them to vote anyway. Around 400 of those noncitizens subsequently voted in at least one election.

Sherrill said officials currently have no evidence that the error changed an election result. The state’s preliminary investigation found that the affected people were scattered across New Jersey and registered across party affiliations, with most unaffiliated.

Dhillon demanded their full names, dates of birth, nationalities, residential addresses, and registration dates and locations.

For those who voted, the DOJ also requested information about when and where they cast ballots. If they voted by mail, the department demanded copies of the accompanying certifications and signatures.

“Ensuring that U.S. citizens’ votes are not illegally diluted by noncitizens’ votes is of paramount importance,” Dhillon wrote. “We therefore write to formally request additional information to assess New Jersey’s compliance with various federal statutes.”

The department also directed New Jersey to preserve all records connected to the disclosure.

The DOJ’s notice in the Caldwell case acknowledged that it remains unknown which elections the affected noncitizens voted in or whether their ballots changed the outcome of any race.

The lawsuit, initially filed in February, seeks to compel New Jersey to provide its complete, unredacted statewide voter file under Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960. New Jersey and intervening groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, contend that the demand exceeds the DOJ’s statutory authority and conflicts with state privacy protections

Von Spakovsky pointed to the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act, which contain voter-list maintenance provisions that the attorney general has authority to enforce.

“The only way the government can determine whether the state is actually complying with those provisions is if they are able to take an intense, in-depth look at their voter registration list,” he said.

The disclosure could strengthen DOJ’s factual justification for inspecting New Jersey’s records, particularly after courts found that some of its demand letters failed to state an adequate “basis and purpose.” But the incident does not necessarily settle the separate legal question of whether Title III permits the DOJ to obtain an entire unredacted voter database.

The Trump administration has lost 16 consecutive district court cases in its nationwide voter-data campaign and also lost its first federal appeal. No court has ordered a state to surrender an unredacted statewide voter file.

Von Spakovsky argued that judges ruling against the DOJ have failed to grapple adequately with the attorney general’s enforcement responsibilities under the National Voter Registration Act and Help America Vote Act.

“How can the federal government enforce those provisions if they don’t have access to the statewide voter registration list?” he said. “That is why I think those judges are all wrong.”

The disclosure also prompted President Donald Trump to renew his push for the SAVE America Act.

“35,152 is the new number just released by Homeland Security of non-citizens registered to vote in New Jersey,” Trump wrote on Truth Social late Tuesday. “These are just the ones that got caught.”

Trump’s figure referred to a separate Department of Homeland Security estimate of possible noncitizens on New Jersey’s rolls. Sherrill has said the state asked DHS for the identities of those alleged registrants and evidence supporting that number but has not received them.

Trump also claimed the registrants were “all Dumocrats,” although Sherrill said those affected by the software error were registered as Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters.

The president concluded his post by calling on Republicans to “straighten out our Crooked Elections” and pass the SAVE America Act, which includes voter identification and citizenship-verification requirements.

WHITE HOUSE TAKES VICTORY LAP OVER DISCOVERY OF 6,600 NONCITIZENS ON NEW JERSEY VOTER ROLLS

Whether the DOJ’s New Jersey lawsuit shares the same fate as the department’s other cases rests in the hands of the judge, though legal experts previously told Bloomberg Law there is a chance more federal appeals courts could side with the DOJ as more cases arrive to them.

“There is sometimes a groupthink that develops among district judges” on issues where there isn’t a lot of case law, said Abhishek Kambli, a partner at Holtzman & Vogel and former associate attorney general for the DOJ. “When you see a series of decisions go one way, then the easiest thing to do is to go along with the chorus.”