Washington — Washington state’s chief election official told the Justice Department on Wednesday that a list of 400 people the federal government alleges are noncitizens who are registered to vote in the state is “not reliable” and contained “many” people who are U.S. citizens.
Steve Hobbs, the Washington secretary of state, was responding to a letter from two federal prosecutors in the state calling for ballots received from the suspected noncitizens to be set aside and not counted until their citizenship status could be verified.
Prosecutors Neil Floyd and Pete Serrano sent their letter to Hobbs on Monday, just over one week before the Nov. 3 elections, which will determine which party controls the House and Senate. Voting has been underway in Washington since mid-October, and more than 1.3 million mail ballots had been returned as of Wednesday.
But Hobbs said a preliminary investigation of the government’s list found that “many of the persons on your list are United States citizens.” It also contained records for a “significant number” of people who were not currently registered to vote in Washington or whose registrations are inactive, according to the secretary of state.
“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 his own letter responding to Floyd and Serrano.
The secretary of state warned that it would likely be unlawful for election workers to not count ballots from people whose names appeared on what he said is the Justice Department’s “unverified” list.
“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 also raised concerns with the Trump administration’s process for identifying the people who it said are on Washington’s voter rolls and not eligible to vote. He said the Trump administration did not provide any information about how the material on the list was collected or from what sources.
Additionally, Hobbs said the list was provided to him by the Justice Department lawyers on a PDF document with a printed spreadsheet. That spreadsheet did not include publicly available fields to facilitate a review of the records, like voter ID number or the alleged noncitizen’s address. The list also included some duplicate entries, according to the secretary of state, which he said indicates it was “created in a rushed manner.”
The Justice Department’s demand to Washington state is the second in recent weeks to raise claims about noncitizens on state voter rolls in the days before the midterm elections. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter sent letters to California election officials earlier this month demanding they separate ballots from 20,000 people whom the Trump administration believes are noncitizens.
The Justice Department went on to sue California officials and sought a temporary order requiring election workers to put aside the thousands of ballots received from those alleged noncitizens.
But on Wednesday night, a federal judge in California rejected the Justice Department’s request and raised concerns about the government’s process for creating 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 earlier this week, Floyd and Serrano claimed that many of the more than 400 people who they said are registered to vote in Washington are green-card holders, who have legal immigration status but are not U.S. citizens and therefore cannot vote in federal elections.
They set a 48-hour deadline for Hobbs to review the list of 400 alleged noncitizens to determine their citizenship and direct election workers to not tabulate any ballots received from them until their citizenship can be verified.
“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.
It did not appear that a lawsuit had been filed as of Thursday afternoon.