Credit: (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)

WASHINGTON — A little after 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Jasmine Crockett, a Democratic congresswoman from Texas who holds a Dallas-area seat in the House, walked into the hearing room of 2141 Rayburn, a congressional office building.

“Are we excited to talk about voter fraud?” Crockett, dressed in a pale orange suit, asked her colleagues on the committee dais as she got settled.

“Absolutely,” replied Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd), the South Jersey Republican who called the hearing.

For nearly two hours, Van Drew and Republicans skirmished with Democrats on the subcommittee and took aim at different types of voter fraud — Republicans targeting left-leaning states and Democrats zeroing in on President Donald Trump and his allies — without offering new details about the voter registration error that allowed about 6,600 noncitizens to register to vote in New Jersey, and roughly 400 of them to vote in at least one election.

Congressional Republicans, led by Van Drew, are examining the New Jersey error in an ongoing probe, while the Department of Justice launched its own inquiry in July.

After she publicly disclosed the voter error this summer, Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, criticized Phil Murphy, her predecessor, and said she would “hold accountable” the people who caused the error.

Sherrill’s administration hired CSG Law, a firm based in Roseland that includes Jeffrey Chiesa, who was state attorney general under Republican Gov. Chris Christie, to investigate.

The software problem ran for a year, starting in July 2023.

“During that one-year period, about 6,600 people answered ‘No’ when asked on a keypad whether they were a U.S. citizen when applying for drivers’ licenses and identification cards,” Sherrill said. “But through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway.”

At least two Department of Justice lawyers examining New Jersey’s voting election-system malfunction have ties to election deniers.

Since Sherrill’s disclosure, national Republicans have tried to whip political support for their strict voter identification bill, often using New Jersey as an example.

“Stories like what happened in New Jersey undermine confidence in our elections,” said Bryan Steil, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin and chairman of the House Administration Committee, which has jurisdiction over elections.

“What the hell is going on in our state, in our country?” Van Drew said Tuesday afternoon at the hearing. “Whose side is the New Jersey governor on?” he said, adding that a few votes can determine the outcome of an election.

“It can be a handful of votes,” Van Drew said. “Five votes, ten votes, three votes can make a big difference.”

“New Jersey may just be the tip of the iceberg,” Josh Findley, a fellow at the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank, said without offering evidence.

Crockett set her sights on Trump, who last week headlined a Republican political convention in Dallas, where he asked his supporters to “cheat like hell” in the midterm elections to help the Republican Party.

“We all know President Trump is the biggest threat to democracy,” Crockett said, listing the president’s efforts and threats to dispatch immigration agents to polling places, redraw congressional maps in favor of Republicans and upend the mail-in ballot voting system.

Last week, Trump said he would direct payments of $5,000 to every adult if Republicans hold both chambers of Congress — almost certainly a claim that violates federal law.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, called the Murphy administration’s handling of the voter error a “blunder.”

“This mistake did not alter the outcome of a single election,” Raskin said, commending Sherrill’s choice to disclose the error. “She is coming clean about what happened in the past.”

In late August, an attorney for Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell, who is New Jersey’s chief elections officer, told Van Drew that state officials would supply an “initial” production of records to the House.

“While Republicans in DC continue to weaponize this issue to advance Trump’s voter suppression agenda and showboat for their 15 seconds of fame on Fox News, Governor Sherrill is focused on continuing to solve the problem she inherited from the previous administration,” Darwin Pham, a spokesperson for Sherrill, said in an emailed statement to NJ Spotlight News. “This is political theater led by a man who hired a campaign operative convicted of voter fraud, bribery, and blackmail, and who has absolutely no credibility to talk about election integrity.”

Democrats have criticized Van Drew over his ties to Craig Callaway, the former Atlantic City councilman sentenced last year to 24 months in prison for various election-related crimes.

The Sherrill administration has provided some publicly available information to the House, such as an explanatory memo.

Van Drew voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden, a fact that has infuriated Democrats including Sherrill, a former colleague of his, for years.

“The number could be higher,” Van Drew said at the hearing’s end, referring to the number of possible noncitizens who have voted in a state election. “The number could be a lot higher.”