Washington Says DOJ List of 400 Noncitizen Voters Includes Citizens
Washington's top election official says a Justice Department list of more than 400 alleged noncitizen voters includes many U.S. citizens.
Washington state’s top election official has told the U.S. Justice Department that a federal list of more than 400 people it says are noncitizens registered to vote is “not reliable” and includes “many” U.S. citizens, CBS News reported Thursday. The dispute comes days before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, with federal prosecutors demanding that the state set aside those voters’ ballots and threatening to go to court if it does not.
What happened
On Monday, Oct. 26, Charles Neil Floyd, the acting U.S. attorney for Western Washington, announced at a news conference that a federal investigation had identified people on the state’s voter rolls who he said are not citizens and have cast ballots. He was joined by Pete Serrano, the first assistant U.S. attorney for Eastern Washington, and April Miller, the acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Seattle, according to The Seattle Times.
KOMO News reported that the department put the number at 405 people, and The Seattle Times reported that Floyd said those individuals had voted about 1,500 times combined. Floyd said he had “the highest level of confidence” in the findings, KOMO reported, and described the list as drawn from a small sample, saying he believed thousands of noncitizens may have voted in the state.
A letter from prosecutors to Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs asked election officials to sequester ballots from the listed voters and not count them until citizenship could be verified. According to CBS News, the prosecutors said many of the people on the list are green-card holders, who are lawful permanent residents but are not allowed to vote in federal elections. They gave the state 48 hours to act and warned that otherwise “the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief.” CBS News reported that no lawsuit had been filed as of Thursday afternoon.
How the list was built and the state’s objections
According to KOMO News, Floyd said federal agents questioned noncitizen detainees and people crossing the border about whether they had voted in U.S. elections, then compared their answers with federal immigration databases and publicly available voter registration information. The Justice Department acknowledged that some people on the list may have since become naturalized citizens.
Hobbs, a Democrat, responded in writing on Wednesday. CBS News reported that he said a preliminary review found that many people on the list are citizens, and that a “significant number” were not currently registered or had inactive registrations. He raised several other concerns:
- The department did not explain how the information was gathered or where it came from.
- The list arrived as a PDF of a printed spreadsheet without voter ID numbers or addresses that would help match records.
- It contained duplicate entries, which Hobbs said suggested it had been “created in a rushed manner.”
- One record dated to 1994, according to his office, which called the federal flagging system “flawed.”
Hobbs wrote that without individualized proof that a voter is ineligible, officials cannot lawfully refuse to process a registered voter’s ballot, CBS reported. He also said federal law bars removing people from voter lists within 90 days of an election, according to KOMO. His office said noncitizen voting cases are rare, that voters attest to their eligibility on ballot envelopes, and that suspected cases are referred to county sheriffs and prosecutors.
More than 1.3 million mail ballots had been returned in Washington as of Wednesday, according to CBS News. The state has more than 5 million registered voters, The Seattle Times reported.
Competing views
Floyd criticized state officials for refusing to share full voter rolls with federal authorities, accusing them of “sticking their head in the sand,” The Seattle Times reported. He said it was too early to say whether anyone would face criminal charges, and noted that voting illegally is a crime that can also disqualify a person from naturalization. Jim Walsh, chair of the Washington State Republican Party, said the findings exposed weaknesses in the state’s automatic voter registration system, KOMO reported.
Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, criticized the department’s actions, and Hobbs accused federal officials of harassing citizens, according to The Seattle Times. The newspaper noted that there is little evidence of widespread noncitizen voting, although President Donald Trump has repeatedly said it is common. Some Democrats have warned that the federal moves could cast doubt on the midterm results.
Background and what comes next
The Washington demand is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to scrutinize state voter rolls. Courts have repeatedly rejected Justice Department lawsuits seeking unredacted state voter data; last month, a federal judge dismissed a suit against Hobbs, which The Seattle Times described as the administration’s 25th consecutive loss on the issue.
In California, the department sought to have officials separate ballots from about 20,000 people it believes are noncitizens. The Seattle Times reported that a federal appeals court declined the administration’s injunction request on Monday and returned the case to a lower court. On Wednesday night, U.S. District Judge David Carter rejected the request, saying the rights at stake should not be lost because of “unfounded allegations stemming from a procedure rife with uncertainty and errors,” according to CBS News.
The Associated Press reported that the Justice Department expects to send Washington another list of suspected noncitizen registrants before Election Day.
