The Justice Department on Monday asked Washington state election officials to set aside any ballots it receives from more than 400 people the department says are registered to vote without U.S. citizenship, less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
In a letter to Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, federal prosecutors said they had identified roughly 1,500 votes cast by the more than 400 people in prior elections and requested that the state segregate any ballots from those registrants until their eligibility could be verified. Washington issues a mail ballot to every registered voter; the state has more than 5 million registered voters.
“Because of limitations the state has placed on our investigation, we’ve only been able to uncover a fraction of the total number,” said Charles Neil Floyd, the acting U.S. attorney in Seattle. “The 405 voters identified so far represented 'the tip of the iceberg'.”
Hobbs said he was reviewing the department’s request and criticized its timing. “The timing of this request – one week before the general election – is no doubt intended to cast unfounded suspicion on the results,” he said. The secretary's office noted that the data the department provided included the last time each of the 405 people voted, and that in one case the voter’s last recorded ballot was in 1994.
What the Justice Department asked for
- That ballots from the identified registrants be set aside pending review.
- That state officials provide records including addresses, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers for the named registrants.
- Verification of whether the individuals were legally eligible to vote in the elections cited by the department.
The department said much of the list was compiled based on what it described as “recent contacts” by federal officers who check whether people they encounter are registered voters. Officials acknowledged limits on access to state records that the department said make it difficult to prove illegal voting without additional information from state election files.
Context and response
The request follows a similar demand earlier this month in California and is part of an administration effort to identify noncitizen voters, a practice critics say is exceptionally rare. The letter asks for specific personal identifiers so federal officials can attempt to determine whether the people named in the department’s review were lawful voters in prior contests.
The Justice Department has not released the names publicly. State officials said they would examine the material the department provided and determine next steps under state law. Washington elections officials have previously resisted broad, last-minute requests from federal authorities when they said the requests risked disrupting normal election procedures.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Number of registrants identified by DOJ | more than 400 |
| Votes the DOJ says were cast by those registrants | 1,500 |
| Washington registered voters | more than 5 million |
The Justice Department said the identification of suspected noncitizen registrants is an ongoing aspect of its work. The request to Washington comes in the final days of early voting in several states and amid heightened scrutiny of election procedures and voter rolls ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
