Justice Department requests Washington state to set aside ballots from 400 alleged noncitizens

Washington — Federal prosecutors in Washington state asked its top election official Monday to set aside ballots from more than 400 people who they believe are not U.S. citizens, expanding the Justice Department’s efforts to call into question the accuracy of states’ voter rolls just days before the midterm elections.

Neil Floyd, the acting U.S. attorney in Seattle, and Pete Serrano, the top federal prosecutor in eastern Washington, said they believe that many of the more than 400 registered voters are green-card holders, who have legal immigration status but are not U.S. citizens and cannot vote in federal elections.

Still, the prosecutors said that the suspected noncitizens have voted in multiple elections, and Floyd estimated that more than 1,500 ballots have been illegally cast.

“This is not the full number of noncitizens who have been voting in Washington,” Floyd said. “This is only the tip of the iceberg.”

Floyd and Serrano said they provided Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs with a list of the 405 people who the Justice Department claims are illegally registered to vote and asked for ballots they may cast to be segregated until their citizenship status is confirmed.

In a letter to Hobbs dated Monday, they said some of the people identified by the Department of Homeland Security as noncitizens voted in elections as recently as the August primaries. Some of the people have voted in Washington for more than a decade and have voted more than two dozen times, Floyd and Serrano said.

DHS is expected to send a second list of people who it believes are not U.S. citizens “imminently,” which will then be shared with Washington elections officials, the prosecutors said.

Floyd and Serrano gave the secretary of state 48 hours, until Wednesday, to review the list of 400 registered voters to determine whether they are U.S. citizens and direct election officials to not tabulate any ballots received from them until citizenship can be determined.

“If you cannot implement this process by then, given the ongoing federal election, the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief,” they wrote.

Hobbs confirmed his office received the letter from the Justice Department but raised concerns with the accuracy of its list, which shows the last time each person voted. The department included multiple records for people who appear to have last voted in the 1990s, including a record for one individual who last voted in 1994, according to the secretary of state’s office. More than 113 million primary and general election ballots have been cast since then.

“We take our responsibility to protect voter information seriously and will only respond to requests that follow due process. We saw what happened in California and don’t want Washingtonians to be harassed,” Hobbs said in a statement. 

He said the timing of the Justice Department’s request, made one week before the Nov. 3 election, “is no doubt intended to cast unfounded suspicion on the results.”

The Justice Department sought Washington state’s unredacted voter registration list last year. After Hobbs refused to turn over the information, the Trump administration sued the state in an effort to obtain the material, which includes voters’ names, addresses, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

A federal judge dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit last month. The Trump administration has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia to get their complete voter rolls, and 27 of those lawsuits have been tossed out by federal judges. Three cases remain pending. One, against Oklahoma, was voluntarily dismissed.

Floyd said during a press conference that because Washington refused to provide its unredacted voter rolls, the Department of Homeland Security used a publicly available list of registered voters in the state and compared it with government information to identify those who are allegedly not U.S. citizens. The Trump administration then conducted further investigation to see if those people cast ballots in Washington, he said.

But the secretary of state’s office warned that the system used by the Justice Department mistakenly flags legitimate U.S. citizens as noncitizens, which puts their right to vote at risk.

Under federal law, it is a crime for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections, and instances of noncitizen voting are rare.

“At a time when thousands of Washington voters already face ballot rejections due to delayed postmarks, our focus should be on ensuring every eligible voter can exercise their right to vote, not creating additional uncertainty about their eligibility,” Hobbs said.

The effort to set aside hundreds of ballots in Washington comes after the Justice Department sent letters to election officials in California earlier this month asking them to separate mail ballots cast by registered voters who the government claims are noncitizens.

Trump administration lawyers gave California election officials 48 hours to review a list of alleged noncitizens and verify their citizenship status.

The Justice Department went on to file a lawsuit against California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan. It asked a federal court to block the state from tabulating mail ballots received from 20,000 people who it believes are likely noncitizens until their citizenship status can be verified.

A hearing is set for Tuesday on the Justice Department’s bid to force California to set aside the mail ballots from registered voters on its list. A longshot effort by the Trump administration to obtain an order from a federal appeals court was dismissed Monday night.

So far, the Justice Department has only sent a letter to Washington and has not yet filed a lawsuit seeking to force its election officials to separate mail ballots returned from the 400 alleged noncitizens.