On April 28, 2026, Texas made an admission to the federal government: Individuals who told the Department of Motor Vehicles that they were not U.S. citizens were nevertheless registered to vote. Texas's Secretary of State called it "a clerical error."
The Trump administration did not decry the state for voter fraud. Right-wing media figures did not assert it was a deep state conspiracy. The legacy media did not treat it as headline news.
Nor should it have been.
It was, as Texas said, a simple clerical error. Officials found the mistake, reported it, and took the appropriate steps to fix it. That was the end of the story.
This is not the first instance of a state making a paperwork error, and it will not be the last.
In today’s media environment, red states are given that grace. If you're a blue state, the opposite is true.
On Tuesday, New Jersey announced that a similar clerical error had occurred in the Garden State: After a software failure, people who had identified themselves as non-U.S. citizens to the Motor Vehicle Commission were accidentally registered to vote.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced the error and said the state was actively working to remove those individuals from the rolls. Like Texas, New Jersey is correcting the mistake.
But unlike in Texas, the Trump administration, right-wing media figures, and the corporate media jumped on New Jersey for it...
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