DOJ Asks Washington State to Set Aside 405 Ballots a Week Before Election

Federal prosecutors on Monday asked Washington state's top election official to set aside ballots from more than 400 people they believe are not U.S. citizens, a request that landed one week before the Nov. 3 midterm elections and extends the Justice Department's campaign to challenge state voter rolls.

Neil Floyd, the acting U.S. attorney in Seattle, and Pete Serrano, the top federal prosecutor in eastern Washington, sent the letter to Secretary of State Steve Hobbs. It lists 405 registered voters the department says are illegally registered, and asks that their ballots be segregated until citizenship is confirmed.

The prosecutors said many of the people on the list are likely green-card holders, who have legal immigration status but cannot vote in federal elections. They said the suspected noncitizens had voted in multiple elections, some as recently as the August primaries, and some had voted in Washington for more than a decade, more than two dozen times in total. Floyd estimated that more than 1,500 ballots had been illegally cast, and called the 405 names "only the tip of the iceberg." The Department of Homeland Security is expected to send a second list "imminently."

The letter gave Hobbs 48 hours, until Wednesday, to review the list, determine citizenship, and direct election officials not to count the ballots until the voters' status is resolved. It warned that if the state could not do so, "the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief." As of Tuesday the department had sent only a letter and had not filed a lawsuit in Washington.

Hobbs confirmed his office received the letter but questioned the list's accuracy. It includes multiple records for people whose last vote appears to date to the 1990s, including one person whose last vote was in 1994. Since then, more than 113 million primary and general election ballots have been cast in the state. Hobbs said his office will respond to requests that follow due process and that he does not want Washington residents harassed. He said the timing was intended to cast doubt on the results.

The list was not built from the state's own records. Floyd said Washington refused to give the Justice Department its unredacted voter registration list, so DHS compared a publicly available list of registered voters with government information to identify people it considered noncitizens. Hobbs's office warned that the method mistakenly flags some legitimate citizens, putting their voting rights at risk. Under federal law, noncitizen voting is a crime, and such cases are rare.

The request follows a string of court losses. A federal judge dismissed the department's lawsuit seeking Washington's full voter rolls last month. The administration has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for complete voter rolls; judges have thrown out 27 of those suits, three remain pending, and one, against Oklahoma, was voluntarily dismissed.

A similar fight is under way in California. Earlier this month the department asked election officials there to separate mail ballots from voters it believes are noncitizens, then sued Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan, asking a court to block tabulation of ballots from about 20,000 people. A separate attempt to get a federal appeals court order was dismissed Monday night.