The Justice Department says more than 400 people on Washington’s voter rolls may not be U.S. citizens, and some of them allegedly voted in multiple elections.
Quick Take
- The Justice Department identified over 400 people it says registered and voted while possibly being noncitizens, tied to roughly 1,500 cast ballots.
- Federal prosecutors asked Washington to set aside mail-in ballots from these voters until citizenship can be confirmed.
- Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs says some names on the list belong to actual U.S. citizens, and some aren’t even registered voters.
- No criminal charges have been filed, and officials say it’s too early to know if any will be.
What The Justice Department Says It Found
The Justice Department announced on October 26 that federal data showed hundreds of noncitizens registered to vote in Washington. The agency said it identified over 400 people who registered and voted in multiple elections, with many listed as lawful permanent residents, or green card holders, who generally cannot legally vote in U.S. elections.
Prosecutors from the Western and Eastern Districts of Washington jointly asked the Secretary of State to segregate ballots connected to this group. The request covered an estimated 1,500 votes cast across past elections by the flagged individuals, according to the department’s letter to state officials.
Acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd called the findings “the tip of the iceberg,” a phrase that raises the political stakes well beyond what the public list itself proves. The requested fix wasn’t punishment. It was verification: hold the ballots until citizenship status gets checked by state officials before any conclusions are finalized.
Washington Pushes Back On The Numbers
Secretary of State Steve Hobbs didn’t accept the federal list at face value. He said some people named by the Justice Department are actual U.S. citizens. He added that others on the list aren’t even registered to vote in Washington at all.
Hobbs also flagged a data problem. One record the federal government shared dated back to 1994, more than three decades old. His office said the matching system the Justice Department often relies on tends to flag legitimate citizens as noncitizens, which threatens real voters’ legal rights if acted on carelessly.
Floyd himself acknowledged federal investigators don’t actually have Washington’s official voting records for the people on the list. That’s a significant admission. It means the claim rests on federal data matching, not a direct check against the state’s own voter history.
Why This Keeps Happening Nationwide
Washington isn’t an isolated case. Days earlier, federal attorneys asked a California court to freeze ballots from more than 20,000 suspected noncitizen voters, and a federal appeals court blocked that request just two weeks before Election Day. The pattern is the same: a large database match, a push for immediate action, and a scramble to verify names against messy state records.
Research on this exact question is instructive. A Brennan Center review of 42 jurisdictions covering 23.5 million votes cast in 2016 found only about 30 suspected noncitizen voting cases referred for investigation, a rate of roughly 0.0001 percent. That doesn’t mean it never happens. It means large suspect lists built from database matching have historically produced more false alarms than confirmed fraud.
None of that erases the real possibility that some people on Washington’s list did vote unlawfully. Citizenship fraud in voter registration is a genuine concern, and verifying it matters for election integrity. But a list built from data matching isn’t the same as a list of proven violations, and conflating the two does a disservice to both accountability and due process.
What Happens Next For These Ballots
No charges have been announced against anyone on the list, and federal officials say it’s premature to say whether prosecutions will follow. That leaves an open question hanging over all 400-plus names: how many are confirmed noncitizens, how many are clerical mismatches, and how many are citizens wrongly flagged.
Washington’s Secretary of State says his office will only hand over protected voter information through proper legal channels, not simply because federal prosecutors asked. That standoff, playing out as ballots are already being cast in the midterms, means voters may not get clear answers until well after Election Day passes.
Sources:
abcnews4.com, justice.gov, pbs.org, seattletimes.com, theolympian.com
