08/31/2026
How big is “massive”? What counts as a “catastrophe”?
This morning, Rep. Jefferson Van Drew continued his effort to keep NJ’s motor-voter screw-up in the news. He wrote an op-ed that described 400 votes cast by noncitizens as a “massive failure” and a “catastrophic breakdown” that should serve as a “warning for America.”
Four hundred votes sounds like a lot.
But it represents just one one-hundredth of one percent (0.0001) of the 3.334 million votes in last year’s gubernatorial election. And it is far less than the 11,191 New Jersey vote-by-mail ballots returned and not counted in 2024.
This is another way that politicians take advantage of the shortcuts our brains take. We hear a number like 400 and react to its size. Our human nature isn’t very good at asking, “400 out of how many?”
Here again, we voters have an opportunity to demand more of our representatives. Before we react to a politician’s cry that a problem is massive or catastrophic, we should insist on a clear explanation of the scope of the problem.
Isn’t that what common sense demands?
