Citizenship Meant Everything to My Family. Does New Jersey Still Value It?

By Assemblyman Erik Simonsen

There are only a handful of moments in life that truly change you.

Watching my two daughters come into the world will always be among the greatest moments of my life. Right behind them was watching my wife raise her right hand and take the Oath of Allegiance to become an American citizen.

I remember what it took to reach that moment. The paperwork. The interviews. The studying for the civics exam. The waiting. The uncertainty. Then came the overwhelming sense of pride as she officially became an American citizen.

Later, I watched my mother-in-law achieve that same dream. My brother-in-law chose an even more extraordinary path by serving our nation in the United States Navy before earning his citizenship.

That is why this recent news out of Trenton wasn’t just another political headline to me. It felt personal.

Governor Mikie Sherrill recently announced that a software error resulted in approximately 6,600 individuals who identified themselves as non-U.S. citizens being registered to vote in New Jersey. Preliminary findings also showed that nearly 400 of those individuals cast ballots before the mistake was discovered.

Whether those registrations were intentional or accidental is beside the point. They should never have happened.

When you’ve watched someone you love earn the right to vote, you never take that right for granted.

For my family, citizenship was never automatic. It was earned through commitment, perseverance, and respect for the rule of law. That is why I have consistently supported commonsense voter identification requirements and other measures that strengthen confidence in our elections.

Showing identification to vote is no different than showing identification to board an airplane, cash a check, or pick up a prescription. These are reasonable safeguards that protect the integrity of our elections and help ensure every legal vote counts.

This issue should not divide us along partisan lines. Every eligible citizen deserves confidence in our elections, and every legal immigrant deserves to know that the citizenship they worked so hard to earn still means something.

The people who understand this better than anyone are those who have lived it.

My wife does.

My mother-in-law does.

My brother-in-law does.

Their journeys remind me that becoming an American citizen is more than completing paperwork. It is a promise to this country, its Constitution, and the generations that will follow.

The American Dream is worth earning. The right to vote is worth protecting. We should never take either for granted.

Tell Trenton: Pass Commonsense Voter ID