Erin Burnett: NJ Election Fraud ‘Seeds Falling on Fertile Ground’

Last week, New Jersey Democrat Governor Mikie Sherill announced that her administration had found 6,600 non-citizens registered to vote due to a “software error,” with 400 casting illegal ballots. The bombshell revelation should have increased support for the SAVE Act, but the liberal media instead downplayed its significance. On Tuesday, Sherrill refused to give the names of the illegally registered voters to the DOJ, and CNN’s Erin Burnett on OutFront rushed to her defense.

The real problem with the illegally registered voters in New Jersey, Burnett argued, was that people noticed it was happening. It was “one of the worst headlines,” she said, but “maybe the headline should be ‘Hey, they caught it. They fixed it,” instead of “Oh wow, that’s bad.”

Burnett also implied praise for Sherrill “refusing to hand over those 6,600 names to the Department of Justice. She’s saying, ‘no, that’s a violation of privacy laws and state laws.’” 

“The president will try to be punitive about it,” Jamal Simmons, Kamala Harris’s former communications director, said to Burnett. “He will look for ways to apply pressure to the governor of New Jersey to get her to hand it over.”

And then, as they always do, he spun the story into an argument against passing the SAVE Act:

One thing that’s very nerve-wracking about the SAVE Act, about all of this is as if the president is trying to create a national voter registration list, a national list of Americans.  

But Simmons also tried to appeal to conservative Americans, the vast majority of whom support requiring I.D. to vote:

I think Americans, conservative Americans in particular, have really pushed back on anything like this for generations. . . states’ rights, and the idea of a national ID, a national registry that all of us will be on, and the President of the United States can choose to allow people to vote or not allow people to vote.

Federal auditing of the voter rolls will not give the president the power to decide who votes and who doesn’t. It is still up to the states to run and declare elections. 

The Democrats and the liberal media can’t have it both ways. If you want to talk about how great it is that a Democratic governor cracked down on fraud, first you have to acknowledge that the fraud took place. And the Republicans have been blowing the whistle on this type of fraud for a long time, but the Democrats still don’t want to admit it’s happening.

The transcript is below. Click “expand” to read:

CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront
7/28/26
7:15:24 p.m. Eastern

ERIN BURNETT: Jamal, one of the worst headlines on all of this has been what came out of New Jersey a few days ago that there were – against people [who] went to get their driver’s license. They said they weren’t citizens. And so, they checked that box and then they got added to the voter rolls anyway. 

JAMAL SIMMONS: Yeah.

BURNETT: That’s the kind of headline where, maybe the headline should be, ‘hey, they caught it. They fixed it. They’re taking care of it and should be.’ 

SIMMONS: True.

BURNETT: But there’s also the headline of ‘oh wow, that’s bad. And is there more of that?’ 

Right, in the context that we’re in now, that those seeds can fall on fertile ground? 

So now the New Jersey governor, Governor Mikie Sherrill, she’s refusing to hand over those 6,600 names to the Department of Justice. She’s saying, ‘no, that’s a violation of privacy laws and state laws.’ 

Do you think she will prevail? And what do you think’s going on here as to why the Trump administration wants those names when New Jersey is saying ‘we went through and are taking them off the rolls, we are taking care of the problem.’

SIMMONS: Yeah. There will be a fight about it, and we know the president will try to be punitive about it. He will look for ways to apply pressure to the governor of New Jersey to get her to hand it over. 

One thing that’s very nerve-wracking about the SAVE Act, about all of this is as if the president is trying to create a national voter registration list, a national list of Americans. 

And I think Americans, conservative Americans in particular, have really pushed back on anything like this for generations. 

BURNETT: Right. States’ rights, right–

SIMMONS: And now they’ve got a Republican president who’s trying to–

BURNETT: I mean, states rights, states run elections–

SIMMONS: –states rights, and the idea of a national ID, a national registry–

BURNETT: Yeah.

SIMMONS: –that all of us will be on, and the President of the United States can choose to allow people to vote or not allow people to vote, to get mail-in ballots or not get mail-in ballots, because that’s part of the deal that the postal service will only deliver to people who are on the national registry. 

This is really concerning for everyone who worries about having a functioning democracy.

BURNETT: Well, as you point out, it’s not a Democrat thing. It’s actually a conservative thing, right? I mean, it’s states’ rights at its core, federalism.