- She's back by popular demand.

She is State Senator Holly Schepisi, a Republican from Bergen County.

She's the conference leader in the Senate with her party.

Good to see you, Senator.

- Great to see you too, Steve.

- Let everyone know what a conference leader is.

- So essentially, I'm the one who gets tasked during budget season and voting sessions when we get a data dump of a hundred new bills, a budget nobody's ever seen, over a thousand pages of reading material on a Sunday night for a voting session on Monday to actually read through everything, sit with my caucus and try to cogently explain what it is we're voting on.

- You did not give a lot of confidence to voters just then.

What do they do down there?

So how about this?

Okay.

So one of the first things I wanted to talk to you about, and then we're taping on the 22nd of July, this will be seen later, was we have a graphic that'll come up right now.

It's called Trust in Our Elections.

And Holly, we've known each other for more than a few years.

And straight up, I was about to say, look, our elections are secure.

Senator Schepisi is gonna reaffirm that our elections are secure.

No election was stolen and that we need to have confidence in our elections.

And then I look today, this is the New York Post.

It's got a great sports section, but it could be the Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times.

You may have heard about this, Senator.

The governor, Governor Sherrill, admitted yesterday that the state registered 6,600 non-citizens to vote because of a software glitch in quotes by an outside vendor, and at least 400 of those people voted in the last, well, in 2025, I think it was.

Senator, A, are you surprised?

- Unfortunately, no.

And I have been a firm proponent of talking about elections are secure.

We need confidence in our electoral system.

But back in 2018, when I was then an assemblywoman, I was up vigorously opposing certain initiatives that my Democratic colleagues were putting forth indicating that they were going to erode confidence in the system.

2018, they implemented the legislation that would make it automatic opt in, if you went to the Motor Vehicle Commission, you would be automatically registered to vote.

In 2019, right around Christmas, they decided to move forward with an additional proposal allowing everybody who was an undocumented resident of New Jersey to get driver's licenses.

I went back and I checked my own Facebook posts.

I looked at speeches I gave at that time.

And it is literally foretelling the future of where we are today.

The way that those bills were implemented, there were no checks and balances.

And it at anytime-- - Checks and balances on what, Senator?

- No checks and balances on ensuring that only citizens were in fact voting.

So for any of my Democratic colleagues who express awe or, oh my god, how did this happen?

It's garbage because the system was done in such a fashion as to ensure that we did not have that ability.

Yes, 6,600 people were identified thus far due to this software glitch.

The vendor is now pushing back issued a statement last night and said, no, this is firmly on the state of New Jersey.

But out of those 6,600 that they identified, these are people who affirmatively indicated and checked off, no, I am not eligible to vote.

We have had-- - Because I'm not a citizen.

- And because I'm not a citizen.

And yet somehow, after affirmatively indicating that they weren't eligible to vote, not only did they get put on voter rolls, but we know of approximately 400, which is about 8% of those who affirmatively said I am not eligible to vote, that cast a vote nevertheless.

We've had conservatively, in the first three months after the law got passed, allowing undocumented to get driver's licenses in New Jersey, we had over a hundred thousand people who applied and came in for driver's licenses who are undocumented residents of this state.

And that was, what, five years ago?

- You're saying do the math.

I don't want to answer for you, but Senator, you're saying do the math.

You think it's much higher?

You think it's much higher?

- It is unequivocally much higher.

And just assume that we take a number of a quarter of a million.

There are approximately half a million eligible driving undocumented in the state.

You take, you know, 8% as a blended average.

We're looking at, you know, a minimum 40, 50,000 people who probably may have voted.

And that is meaningful.

We've had elections since that time with the assembly.

We lost two of our colleagues, one in D8.

He lost his seat by only 54 votes in 2023.

We had D2, Claire Swift.

She lost her seat by, I think it was 845 votes.

This is not just something we gloss over.

This is something that we need to be open and transparent about.

We need bipartisan, you know, sitting down with our election officials.

- Yes but Senator, here's the other side of it.

Anyone who tries to defend this, explain it away, it's not credible.

However, the President, the leader of the Republican Party, the leader of our country is arguing in many ways for the federal government to take over elections.

See?

See what happened in New Jersey?

It proves my point.

- I respectfully, sorry.

- You can disagree, but I'm not saying what I think.

I'm saying what the president is saying.

He's saying, see, this is an example of what I'm talking about.

But the president also goes around saying constantly that the 2020 election is stolen, was stolen.

See?

You have always been a reasonable, moderate, thoughtful, excellent legislator.

I know you don't believe that.

But now you know this horrific situation, embarrassing, terrible, which you foretold earlier, what you just talked about.

You know this is gonna be used to do all kinds of things that I know you don't want to see happen because we don't want the feds taking over elections, do we?

- Oh, if we don't want feds taking over elections, New Jersey has to do the right thing.

- Agreed.

- New Jersey has to allow a full audit internally bipartisan to take place.

And wherever we end up, we end up.

But we need to ensure for our population, our residents in New Jersey, people like myself who have always been balanced and fair on this, to actually have trust that we are doing the right thing in New Jersey.

And right now, there is nobody I know of in the past 24 hours that has that trust.

And so this is a critical juncture for our state.

We just had at our last voting session the day of the budget, you know, the Voter Empowerment Act.

We specifically on the floor asked for amendments to ensure that only citizens can vote.

And in New Jersey, it's the tip of the iceberg.

You have people who are dead, who are still getting vote by mail ballots with repeated calls saying, please take my dead father off the rolls.

You let people who are being now as they leave prison being automatically enrolled to vote.

- Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting.

I'm gonna say this.

Everything you're saying is legitimate and credible.

That's not the same as the president and others saying the election is rigged.

That's sloppy, crappy administrative efforts that don't make any sense that the bureaucracy's not working and no one's gonna disagree with you that we need to do better.

And the audit, bipartisan.

You know and I know that's not the same as rigging an election to make sure.

How could it be that the president says that 2020 was rigged?

2016 was not rigged.

2024 was not.

The elections I win, they were good.

The elections I lose, rigged.

The elections of people I support, they lose, they're rigged.

The other way, they're good.

That's not what you're talking about, Senator.

- No, I'm not talking about that.

But in fairness to President Trump and his administration, I don't think this would have been released had they not written the letter to the state and had he not had his little thing saying that he's doing an investigation that this is what they found at the federal level.

Because it's come out in the past 24 hours that the state was aware of this issue back in 2024.

It's been two years.

- In the Murphy administration?

- Yes.

- So hold on one second.

You're saying that the head of Homeland Security, Mr.

Mullen, appointed by the president who sent a letter to the Secretary of State, I believe in New Jersey, that happens to be the Lieutenant Governor Dale Caldwell.

Hey, we need this, this, and this information.

And if we don't get it from you, we are going to withhold federal funding.

You believe that's what caused this?

- Unequivocally.

Unequivocally, it is the only reason that this came out the week that it came in.

Otherwise, people have had knowledge.

The legislature hasn't had knowledge.

The press hasn't had knowledge.

The people at the state haven't had knowledge.

But this is something that they've been aware of for two years.

And that does not sit right.

- When you say they, when you say they, Governor Sherrill has not been in, I'm not here to defend Governor Sherrill.

She's been in office since January.

The Murphy administration were there before that.

She actually said publicly this wasn’t... this happened in a previous administration.

- The fact that it happened in a previous administration.

Look, I'm not blaming Governor Sherrill for this at all.

- Who's responsible, Senator?

- My Democratic colleagues who willfully put through back-to-back legislation and stripped out any protections to ensure that this would not occur, and the prior governor.

And when we got up and really logically and impassioned and, you know, spoke about this, real time, we were dismissed.

We were called xenophobes.

We were called a whole host of terrible things where it was a very legitimate point, and there were so many better ways to do this.

You know, they included language in that bill that prohibited the Motor Vehicle Commission from sharing information with fellow New Jersey state agencies.

That's wrong.

- Senator, there's so many other issues we need to talk to you about.

And I want to apologize to our audience for making this all about trust or lack of trust in our election process.

That is State Senator Holly Schepisi, the conference leader.

Holly, I want to thank you so much for joining us, Senator.

- Thank you.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato.

Thank you for watching, we'll see you next time.

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