More Motor Vehicle fun

Good morning!

Whoopsie! Gov. Mikie Sherrill on Wednesday announced that her administration’s probe into a voter registration snafu that led thousands of noncitizens to get added to the voter rolls has uncovered another 1K or so improper registrations.

Based on what Sherrill is saying, most of these are not as alarming as those uncovered earlier this year. About 750 of these folks, during visits to the Motor Vehicle Commission, identified themselves as not being old enough to vote, though they also entered birth dates that indeed made them of legal age to cast ballots. These sound like the kind of people I get stuck behind at the ShopRite self-checkout.

The administration also found about 340 improper registrations done during prisoner reentry visits dating back to 2016. Those would be mobile clinics that go to lockups to get inmates prepared for life on the outside. These are being flagged for potential removal from the voter rolls.

“I promised New Jerseyans that we would get to the bottom of this issue and be transparent every step of the way. That is exactly what I will continue to do,” Sherill said.

New Jersey Republicans say they want more information, including a full report on these errors.

Read more from Nikita Biryukov.

Elections: Rebecca Bennett, the Democrat hoping to unseat GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr. in the 7th District, campaigned with former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and other anti-gun violence activists in New Providence on Wednesday. Gun owners have been steadily trying to chip away at New Jersey’s famously tough gun laws since a U.S. Supreme Court decision in their favor, and that’s a reason New Jerseyans should elect Bennett over Kean, they said.

Giffords survived a gunshot to the head during an event in Arizona in 2011. “Words once came easily. Today I struggle to speak. But I’ve not lost my voice. America needs all of us to speak out, even when you have to fight to find the words,” Giffords said.

Labor: Aggressive immigration enforcement, aging journeymen, and a building boom for data centers are depleting the nation’s supply of skilled trade workers. New Jersey is one of nine states identified by the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades as having high demand but low supply of skilled labor.

Affordability: In incredibly funny news, New Yorkers who fled to New Jersey to find lower prices are now finding out that it’s no-so-cheap to live here. The Living Wage Institute, a nonpartisan group that tracks cost of living data, found that families who escaped NYC for life in the Jersey burbs are seeing their budgets grow more rapidly than those who stayed in Manhattan. As someone who got into bidding wars with these transplants when I was buying a home, I only have to say:

Sports: In more evidence that youth sports is a scam and parents should find town-sponsored rec activities or organize them on their own, the guy who runs a Wayne youth hockey team is in hot water after threatening to fine parents who made their own branded jackets without getting his approval and suspend their kids from playing if they didn’t fork over the dough. The guy told Keith Sargeant at NJ Advance Media he never moved forward with suspending the kids, who are about 10 years old, but threatened them to get the parents’ attention.

Honestly, who’d have guessed the guy behind a league with this logo would be a thug?

D.C.: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security obtained tens of millions of records as part of a nationwide effort to find voter fraud and considered using undercover agents to investigate voter registration efforts by nonprofit groups, per new records.