WASHINGTON — Former Englewood Cliffs Mayor Mario Kranjac is urging the Trump administration to dispatch federal election monitors to New Jersey in response to revelations about hundreds of non-citizens casting votes.
Kranjac penned a missive to Attorney General Todd Blanche and U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Robert Frazer arguing that the Garden State’s voter roll issues “warrant further federal scrutiny.”
“The state has not disclosed the magnitude of the problem or the identity of non-citizen registered voters, which likely results from our Governor’s continuation of unlawful sanctuary state policies that provide certain protections and services to noncitizens at taxpayer expense,” Kranjac wrote in the letter.
“Given the state’s reluctance to cooperate, my experience as an elected official in the state leads me to believe the problem could be significantly larger than Gov. Mikie Sherrill is willing to admit or confront publicly,” he added.
Kranjac, a Republican, had led the city of Englewood Cliffs, which is home to CNBC’s headquarters, from 2016 to 2024.
In July, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced that 6,600 people who answered “no” to a question about whether they had US citizenship were added to the voter rolls and about 400 of them cast ballots in elections dating back to 2023.
She blamed it on a “serious software error” in the state’s Motor Vehicle System involving a vendor, French tech company IDEMIA. But IDEMIA disputed her characterizations of that.
Instead, the firm, which said it wasn’t tasked with putting those voters on the rolls, insisted that the state had access to data indicating those individuals weren’t US citizens. It is against the law for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.
All of that came against the backdrop of the Department of Homeland Security suggesting that over 35,000 non-citizens may be on the voter rolls. Sherrill publicly claimed over the summer that her team wasn’t given adequate information about that.
“She just says what people want to hear, but she didn’t actually give names,” Kranjac told The Post. “It’s all still anonymous. I don’t think the Department of Justice has been able to get it out of her. Quite frankly, she should be brought in front of Congress and made to testify.”
In his letter, Kranjac further stressed that “[e]very eligible citizen has an interest in knowing that lawful votes are not diluted by ballots cast by those who are ineligible to participate.”
Kranjac pointed out that New Jersey typically has one of the highest percentages of foreign-born residents who aren’t eligible to run for election of any state in the country, according to the Census.
“[T]heir President incited an insurrection on the nation’s Capitol, killing innocent people, so he could continue his lie that he wasn’t handily beaten in 2020, and is now weaponizing the Federal government to try to suppress the votes of millions of people across the country,” a Sherrill spokesperson said in response, bashing Republicans.
“Donald Trump and his followers know the American people are about to soundly reject his corruption, his reckless and endless war in Iran, and his driving up prices for every family, and to stop it, they are trying to keep Americans from voting.”
In addition to wanting more federal election monitors, he also wants the Trump administration to investigate potential illegal voting, ensure that the voter rolls are cleaned up, and get clarity on the Department of Homeland Security’s suggestion that there are over 35,000 non-citizens on the voting rolls.
Blanche has defended the Trump administration’s plans to conduct federal oversight of elections during the midterm cycle.
“Since the ’60s, the Department of Justice has monitored elections. Every single election has been monitored,” Blanche told “Fox News Sunday.” “President Trump is doing the same thing that every single administration has done in our generation.”
“This happens in every single election. And of course, we’re going to do it. Of course, we’re going to make sure the law is followed.”
