DOJ asks Washington to set aside ballots from 400 alleged noncitizens

Key points

• Federal prosecutors asked Washington state to set aside ballots from 405 alleged noncitizens before the Nov. 3 election.
• Prosecutors gave Secretary of State Steve Hobbs 48 hours to verify citizenship status.
• Hobbs questioned the list's accuracy and said the timing was intended to cast unfounded suspicion on results.

Federal prosecutors in Washington state asked the state's top election official on Monday to set aside ballots from more than 400 people they believe are not U.S. citizens. The request from acting U.S. attorney Neil Floyd and eastern Washington federal prosecutor Pete Serrano came just days before the midterm elections.

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

Prosecutors cite illegal voting

The prosecutors said many of the 405 registered voters are believed to be green-card holders, who have legal immigration status but are not U.S. citizens and cannot vote in federal elections. They said the suspected noncitizens have voted in multiple elections, and Floyd estimated more than 1,500 ballots have been illegally cast.

In a letter dated Monday, Floyd and Serrano said some of the people identified by the Department of Homeland Security as noncitizens voted as recently as the August primaries. They gave Hobbs 48 hours, until Wednesday, to review the list and direct election officials not to tabulate any ballots from those people until citizenship can be determined.

This is not the full number of noncitizens who have been voting in Washington. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

— Neil Floyd

What officials said

Hobbs confirmed his office received the letter but raised concerns about the list's accuracy. He said one of the roughly 400 records is from 1994, and more than 113 million primary and general election ballots have been cast since then. He said the timing of the request, one week before the Nov. 3 election, "is no doubt intended to cast unfounded suspicion on the results."

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 and compared it with government information to identify those allegedly not U.S. citizens. The secretary of state's office warned that the system used by the Justice Department mistakenly flags legitimate U.S. citizens as noncitizens.