Washington — Washington state’s top election official told the Justice Department Wednesday that its list of 400 people allegedly registered to vote despite not being U.S. citizens is unreliable and includes many American citizens.
Secretary of State Steve Hobbs was responding to a letter from two federal prosecutors who urged the state to set aside ballots cast by the alleged noncitizens until their citizenship could be confirmed.
Prosecutors Neil Floyd and Pete Serrano sent the letter Monday, slightly more than a week before the Nov. 3 elections that will determine which party controls the House and Senate. Washington’s voting period began in mid-October, and more than 1.3 million mail-in ballots had been returned by Wednesday.
Hobbs said an initial review of the federal list showed that “many of the persons on your list are United States citizens.” The document also included a “significant number” of people who were not currently registered to vote in Washington or whose registrations were inactive, he said.
“It is almost certain more people named on this list are also United States citizens; those already identified may just be the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of individuals that would be wrongfully disenfranchised by the actions you request,” Hobbs wrote in a response to Floyd and Serrano.
Hobbs also cautioned that refusing to count ballots from voters whose names appeared on what he described as the Justice Department’s “unverified” list could violate the law.
“Without individualized proof of ineligibility, it would be both irresponsible and illegal for election officials to decline to process a registered voter’s ballot,” Hobbs said.
The secretary of state questioned how the Trump administration identified the people it claimed were ineligible voters on Washington’s rolls. According to Hobbs, the administration did not explain how the information was gathered or identify the sources used to compile the list.
Hobbs said the Justice Department provided the names in a PDF containing a printed spreadsheet rather than a usable electronic file. The document lacked publicly available details—such as voter identification numbers or addresses—that would have helped state officials verify the records. It also contained duplicate entries, which Hobbs said suggested the list had been “created in a rushed manner.”
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The Justice Department’s action against Washington is the second recent effort to raise allegations about noncitizens on voter rolls shortly before the midterm elections. Earlier this month, Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter sent letters to California election officials demanding that they separate ballots cast by 20,000 people the Trump administration believes are noncitizens.
The Justice Department later filed a lawsuit against California officials, seeking a temporary order that would require election workers to set aside thousands of ballots tied to those allegations.
On Wednesday night, however, a federal judge in California denied the Justice Department’s request and questioned the process used to compile the list.
“Constitutional rights and our democracy are at stake. The public interest favors their protection,” Judge David Carter said. “Individuals who have met the requirements of California’s voter registration laws must not be deprived of a core right merely because of unfounded allegations stemming from a procedure rife with uncertainty and errors.”
In their letter to Hobbs, Floyd and Serrano said many of the more than 400 people identified as registered Washington voters were green-card holders. Such individuals may legally live and work in the United States but are not citizens and cannot vote in federal elections.
The prosecutors gave Hobbs 48 hours to review the list, confirm the citizenship status of those identified and instruct election workers not to count any ballots from them until that review was complete.
“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.
There was no indication as of Thursday afternoon that the Justice Department had filed a lawsuit.
