SEATTLE— Acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd of the Western District of Washington and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Pete Serrano of the Eastern District in a letter addressed to Secretary of State Steve Hobbs demanded his office set aside any ballots cast by 405 people the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has identified, with a high level of confidence, as noncitizens who have voted 1,500 times in elections, ass recently as August 2026. A second list of additional suspected noncitizen registrants is expected before the Nov. 2 general election, the prosecutors wrote in their letter.
“Some of these individuals have voted in Washington for over a decade and have voted more than two dozen times…. It is the United States’ belief that each of these individuals was sent a voteby-mail ballot from the State of Washington to participate in the November 2026 federal election,” Floyd and Serrano state in their letter to Secretary of State Hobbs.
The U.S. Attorney’s Offices asked that any returned ballots from people on the list not be signature-verified or tabulated until citizenship can be confirmed. They set a deadline of noon Pacific time on Wednesday, October 28, warning that failure to implement the process would leave the United States with “no choice but to seek emergency relief.”
“For years Washington State has had a mantra: our elections are ‘free, fair, and devoid of fraud.’ But our investigation shows not all of that is true – people who are non-citizens are registered to vote and are voting in our state,” Floyd said in a statement. “We have identified over 400 non-citizens who are registered to vote and have voted in multiple elections. This is only the tip of the iceberg. We will continue to investigate and identify those who are committing crimes by voting illegally.”
Serrano added that the purpose of sharing the data was “to protect the sanctity of each citizen’s vote” and to ensure “that a Washington citizens’ votes are protected in this and future elections.”
Many of those identified, prosecutors said, are lawful permanent residents, or green-card holders. While such residents have legal status, federal law bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections.
“We have heard from green card holders who were registered against their knowledge via the Washington Motor Voter program,” the DOJ alleges in a supplemental press release. “Then they receive a ballot in the mail and assume they are legally registered – that simply is not the case.”
The letter also references a July 2026 letter from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division to Hobbs warning that the DOJ was examining records for noncitizen registrations. It states that the current request is separate from ongoing litigation over the full voter rolls.
“Washington is now on notice that non-citizens are voting,” Floyd and Serrano said. “It is up to the state to take action to make sure that they are not allowing these non-citizens to vote illegally.”
Individuals who knowingly and willfully falsely claim U.S. citizenship on voter registration applications can face federal charges, including false statements in connection with naturalization applications and fraudulent voter registration. Both are felonies carrying a maximum of five years in prison.
Voting as a noncitizen can also jeopardize future naturalization efforts, because applicants must swear they have never claimed citizenship or voted.
The latest actions occur against the backdrop of an executive order President Trump signed on March 25, 2025, titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” The order directed the Election Assistance Commission to require documentary proof of citizenship on the national mail voter-registration form, instructed federal agencies to provide states access to verification databases, prioritized prosecutions and information-sharing, and conditioned certain federal funding on compliance, among other measures.
In December 2025 the Justice Department sued Hobbs under the Civil Rights Act of 1960 seeking the full unredacted statewide voter file, including driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. A federal judge dismissed the case with prejudice on Sept. 22, 2026, holding that the statewide list is not a “record or paper” covered by the statute because it is created by the state rather than a record that “comes into” officials’ possession. The court also found the demand was not tied to the statute’s purpose of preventing unlawful disenfranchisement.
Sec Hobbs responds to DOJ demands
Sec. Hobbs’ office in a Monday statement wrote that it is reviewing the request and will respond in a manner consistent with state and federal law.
“We take our responsibility to protect voter information seriously and will only respond to requests that follow due process. We saw what happened in California and don’t want Washingtonians to be harassed,” Hobbs said.
He described the timing—one week before the general election—as intended “to cast unfounded suspicion on the results” at a moment when thousands of ballots in the August primary were rejected because of delayed postmarks.
Of the 405 registrations, the Secretary of State’s Office said, one dates back to 1994, and since then, more than 113.5 million primary and general election ballots have been cast in the state. It also said the system used by the DOJ “frequently flags legitimate U.S. citizens as noncitizens,” creating both eligibility and privacy risks, including a 10-year data-retention period.
Federal law limits systematic removals of voters within 90 days of a federal election and every voter attests to eligibility by signing the declaration on the ballot return envelope, the Secretary of State’s Office stated.
Hobbs shared on Tuesday, March 31, 2026, that voter fraud remains extremely rare with just 15 documented cases of noncitizen voting between 1982 and 2025 — 0.000006% of all ballots cast.
According to data from the Heritage Foundation, there have been 15 cases of overall voter fraud in Washington state between 2004 and July 28, 2025: Duplicate Voting (1), Fraudulent use of Absentee Ballot (7), False Registration of a dog (1), False Registration (5); Ineligible Voter (1).
The worst case was in 2007 when ACORN workers in Seattle committed what then-Secretary of State Sam S Reed called the worst case of voter registration fraud in Washington’s history.
When ACORN’s national office threatened to shut down the group’s local office, Clifton Mitchell and his team began using fake names, addresses, birthdays, and social security numbers to meet their voter registration quotas. In total, the group submitted 1,762 fraudulent voter registration forms. Clifton Mitchell was convicted of false registrations and served nearly three months in jail. Four other ACORN workers on his team also received jail time.
Empirical data shows that voter fraud involving mail-in or absentee ballots is exceedingly rare in the United States. An extensive review by the Brennan Center for Justice, release in 2020, found only 491 documented cases of absentee ballot fraud nationwide from 2000 to 2012, out of billions of votes cast.
Similarly, a 2021 Associated Press investigation into potential fraud in six battleground states from the 2020 election identified fewer than 475 cases across all voting methods, none of which altered outcomes.
Separate from voter fraud, eligibility issues had plagued several Washington state candidates and elected officials who have faced residency challenges: Rep. John Ley, Niko Battle and Josh Binda all of whom encountered formal complaints between 2022 and 2025 that were resolved through county audits or courts.
Motor-voter system and ongoing debate
Washington has operated a form of motor-voter registration since at least the early 1990s, with key provisions taking effect around Jan. 1, 1992. The state was already largely aligned with the goals of the federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993—signed by President Bill Clinton and effective for most states in 1995—when it passed implementing legislation to fully meet the federal requirements.
Automatic voter registration for enhanced driver’s licenses and IDs, which require proof of citizenship, began in 2019 after legislation signed in 2018. The system includes an opt-out process via mailed notice.
Proponents of the motor-voter-law describe the arrangement as a convenient way to register eligible citizens during routine Department of Licensing transactions, update addresses, and expand access while still requiring eligibility attestations; and enhanced licenses used for automatic registration already incorporate citizenship proof.
Critics, including state Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, argue that the system lacks sufficient upfront verification and can result in noncitizens being registered—sometimes through DOL processes even when individuals indicate they are not citizens.
Walsh has sought a DOJ audit of the motor-voter process but the legislation never advanced out of committee. A 2025 initiative to require proof of citizenship and cleaner rolls failed to qualify for the ballot; and on February 3, 2026, Walsh and the WAGOP launched a drive to collect signatures for IP26-500 in a second attempt to place the imitative on the ballot. However, that campaign did not collect the roughly 308,911 valid signatures needed by the July 2, 2026 deadline to qualify for the November ballot.
The secretary of state’s office has said that voter list maintenance relies on a centralized statewide database, ERIC data-sharing for cross-state movers and deceased voters, vital-records matches, Department of Corrections felony lists, postal change-of-address information, and staff review of potential duplicates. Voter registration cancellations require human confirmation and follow National Voter Registration Act notice-and-waiting rules.
Citizenship challenges can be filed by any registered voter or the county prosecutor.
Parallel to California and court developments
As mentioned by Sec. Hobbs, the DOJ’s request closely tracks actions it has taken in California, where prosecutors identified roughly 20,000 people described as “likely” noncitizens who received mail ballots. In both states, U.S. Attorney’s Offices asked election officials to review the lists quickly, segregate returned ballots, and refrain from tabulating them until citizenship is confirmed, while cooperating with DHS.
In California the DOJ filed suit and sought emergency court order. On Oct. 26, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the that emergency appeal in a 2-1 decision, holding that the appeals court lacked jurisdiction because the district court had not yet ruled.
Judges Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Gabriel Sanchez, a Biden appointee, wrote that the claimed emergency was at least partly “self-constructed” because of the government’s own delays after ballots had already been mailed. Judge Patrick Bumatay, also a Trump appointee, dissented.
The case has been returned to the district court in Los Angeles for a hearing scheduled for Oct. 27.
Author: Mario Lotmore
