Governor Mikie Sherrill just admitted 6,600 noncitizens got onto her state's voter rolls.
Now the federal government wants access to every American's passport file to stop it from happening again.
The State Department is quietly deciding how far that search will go.
DOJ Targets Passport Records After Supreme Court's SAVE Database Ruling
The Justice Department told a federal court last week that it plans to check voter rolls against records of everyone who has ever applied for a U.S. passport.
That means passport numbers, birth dates, and other identifying details on every American who has ever held a U.S. passport – well over 100 million people.
The State Department plans to publish formal notice in the Federal Register as early as October 22, the first legal step required before the data can move.
The timing is not an accident.
Three days earlier, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that DHS can hand citizenship data to states hunting for noncitizens on their voter rolls.
DHS General Counsel James Percival put it plainly: "American elections are for Americans."
The Justice Department called the ruling exactly what it was: a win the administration had been fighting in court for years to get.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, siding with the same voices who spent years insisting noncitizen voting doesn't happen.
New Jersey's 6,600 Noncitizen Voter Rolls Prove the Problem Is Real
Democrats spent a decade calling noncitizen voting a myth invented by Trump.
Then Governor Sherrill's own administration disclosed that 6,600 noncitizens had been sitting on New Jersey's voter rolls – the result of a motor vehicle system glitch nobody in her party wanted to talk about.
Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson ran the state's entire voter file of 18 million names through the SAVE database and flagged 2,724 potential noncitizens.
Utah's citizenship review confirmed 27 noncitizens out of 2 million registered voters, and 13 of them had already cast a ballot.
Nevada, Michigan, and Montana turned up noncitizens on their rolls through the same kind of federal records check.
Georgia's own Secretary of State found 20 noncitizens among 8.2 million registered voters, and nine of them had voted before anyone caught it.
Florida sued the Biden administration outright after DHS refused to hand over the citizenship records the state needed to clean its own rolls.
Why Passport Records Beat the SAVE Database for Voter Citizenship Verification
Social Security records have been wrong for years, flagging naturalized citizens as noncitizens and citizens as dead.
DHS records carry the same problem, which is why Texas voter Anthony Nels got flagged as a potential noncitizen even though he became a citizen more than a decade ago.
A U.S. passport is the single hardest document in the country to forge and the single clearest proof of citizenship the government has.
That is exactly why the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center are already suing over the citizenship data-sharing scheme this passport plan expands.
They are not fighting for your privacy.
They are fighting to keep the rolls exactly as messy as they have always been.
Every single state that has actually gone looking has found noncitizens on its rolls.
New Jersey found them under a Democrat governor.
Texas found them.
Utah found them.
Georgia found them.
And every time Republicans tried to check the rolls before Election Day, Democrat-aligned groups ran to court to stop them.
Marco Rubio's State Department now controls the one federal database nobody can spin, backdate, or blame on a "software glitch."
It took a Supreme Court fight, years of lawsuits, and Sherrill's own embarrassment to get here.
Democrats have until October 22 before that notice hits the Federal Register and the rest of America finds out exactly how far the check goes.
That is not a coincidence less than two weeks before the midterms, and Trump's Justice Department knows it.
Sources:
- Landon Mion, "State Department considers sharing passport records for voter citizenship checks," Fox News, September 29, 2026.
- "Supreme Court revives DHS' database letting states check voters' citizenship," Washington Times, September 25, 2026.
- "U.S. State Dept. considers opening passport records to verify voter citizenship," OANN, September 29, 2026.
- Texas Secretary of State's Office, press release on SAVE database results, 2026.
- The Daily Signal, "7 States Uncovered Noncitizen Voter Registrations as SAVE Act Debate Heightens," The Daily Signal, June 9, 2026.
- Georgia Secretary of State's Office (Brad Raffensperger), citizenship audit announcement, October 2024.
