Washington State Declares Justice Department Voter List Unreliable

The Nov. 3 midterm election is approaching with more than 1.3 million mail ballots already returned in Washington state, creating a tight timeline for a new federal dispute over voter eligibility. Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs formally rejected a Justice Department list of 400 alleged noncitizen voters on Wednesday, calling the document "not reliable" and requesting that the names be set aside for verification rather than immediately excluded from the count.

Hobbs stated that a preliminary review found "many of the persons on your list are United States citizens." He added that a "significant number" of the individuals were not currently registered or had inactive registrations. In his response to the federal prosecutors, Hobbs warned that the identified citizens might represent only the "tip of the iceberg" of wrongfully disenfranchised voters if the state follows the federal directive without individualized proof of ineligibility.

The dispute began on Monday when federal prosecutors Neil Floyd and Pete Serrano sent a letter to Hobbs. They asserted that many of the 400 people on the list are green-card holders who possess legal immigration status but lack U.S. citizenship, rendering them ineligible for federal elections. The prosecutors gave Hobbs a 48-hour deadline to verify citizenship statuses and direct election workers to hold those ballots. They threatened to seek emergency court relief if the state could not implement the process in time.

Hobbs cited procedural flaws in the federal process, noting that the administration did not explain how the list was compiled or what data sources were used. The department provided the information as a PDF containing a printed spreadsheet that lacked standard fields such as voter ID numbers and addresses. The document also contained duplicate entries, which Hobbs described as evidence that the list was "created in a rushed manner." He argued that it would be illegal for election officials to discard ballots without specific proof that each voter was ineligible.

This is the second major challenge to state voter rolls in recent weeks. Earlier this month, Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter demanded that California separate ballots from 20,000 alleged noncitizens. On Wednesday night, Judge David Carter in California raised concerns about the government's methodology, stating that "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."

As of Thursday afternoon, no lawsuit had been filed in Washington state. Election officials in the state will now proceed with the tabulation of mail ballots while they conduct the requested verification of the 400 names listed by the Justice Department.