Federal Prosecutors Say 405 Noncitizens Voted in Washington and Ask the State to Hold Their Ballots

Washington's top election official has spent the year telling voters the state caught just 15 noncitizens voting in more than four decades. On Monday, federal prosecutors handed him a list of 405 names, and they say those people cast more than 1,500 ballots.

Acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd of Western Washington, joined by the U.S. Attorney's Office for Eastern Washington, asked Secretary of State Steve Hobbs to set aside any ballot those 405 people send in for the Nov. 3 midterms until the state confirms they're eligible. "We are asking the state to set aside those ballots until we can confirm they are legal voters," Floyd said at a news conference at the federal courthouse in Seattle. Ballots are already in the mail. Election Day is eight days out.

Decades of ballots, one list

Floyd laid out the details in an interview with Jason Rantz on Seattle Red 770 AM, which broke the numbers. Some on the list voted once. Some, he said, "have voted several dozen times."

His answer to the usual line, that there's no evidence of "widespread" fraud, was blunt: "That's not my job. I'm not here to identify widespread voter fraud. I'm here to identify people that are violating the law."

And in Washington, small numbers have decided big races. In 2004, Christine Gregoire became governor by 129 votes in the final hand recount. Prosecutors' list alone is more than three times that, and the ballots they say it cast are more than 11 times that margin.

How they built the list without the state's help

This started because Hobbs wouldn't share. The Justice Department asked every state for its full voter list so it could check who is eligible. Hobbs offered a version with birthdates, license numbers and partial Social Security numbers blacked out, and the department sued in December. A Biden-appointed judge, Kymberly Evanson, threw the case out Sept. 22, ruling the demand went beyond what federal law allows. Floyd calls that fight ongoing.

So prosecutors went around the locked door. They took people the government already knows are not citizens, mostly green card holders whose immigration files are easy to trace, and checked them against registration and voting records they pieced together themselves. Many were flagged through their own immigration applications, which ask whether the applicant has ever voted in the U.S. "Up until now, no one checked. Well, guess what? We're checking," Floyd said.

Think of it like a bouncer who isn't allowed to look at IDs. Floyd says that's Washington's setup. The state has told his office that its law bars it from asking about or collecting anyone's immigration status.

The motor voter question

Many on the list told investigators they didn't even know they were registered. Floyd traced their registrations to the driver's license counter, where Washington signs people up to vote. "Somebody checked the wrong box intentionally, knowingly, unknowingly. Who knows?" he said. Once you're on the rolls in Washington, a ballot shows up in your mailbox.

That raises a question the state hasn't answered. Washington's own website says automatic registration happens when someone shows proof of citizenship, such as for an enhanced license. If that's the only door, how did hundreds of green card holders walk through it?

The law, and the warning Hobbs got in July

Voting in a federal election as a noncitizen is a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. 611. Lying about citizenship to register, or on a naturalization application, can bring up to five years in federal prison. Prosecutors say they're starting with the people who should have known better: those told in their green card paperwork that they couldn't vote.

The state was warned. On July 7, Harmeet Dhillon's Civil Rights Division wrote Hobbs that any election official who "knowingly retains noncitizens" on the rolls and counts their ballots could face criminal liability under the National Voter Registration Act. Now Hobbs has the names. As Floyd put it: "Now you're on notice."

What Hobbs says

Hobbs says the system works and the numbers are tiny. "If we go back to 1982 to 2025, we've only had 15 incidences of noncitizens voting," he told FOX 13 Seattle before Monday's announcement, calling the federal effort "aggressive and adversarial." After it, he said his office was reviewing the request and would "only respond to requests that follow due process," adding: "We see what's happening in California and don't want Washingtonians to be harassed." His office says it has gotten about 60 Justice Department subpoenas for voter records since September.

To be fair to the numbers, the Justice Department itself told the state some people on its list may have become citizens since they registered. That's exactly why it's asking the state to check before counting, not after. Floyd says nobody from Hobbs' office has called him outside the lawsuit. "Let's give them the opportunity to do the right thing," he said. "And if they don't, then we'll be talking again."

What's next

The clock is the whole story. Floyd says that once a ballot is counted, "it's too late. It's going to count." The Justice Department says a second list is coming before Election Day, and Floyd expects it to grow. His team hasn't even started on people in the country illegally. "I'm confident in saying there are thousands of people that are voting that are not citizens," he said.

Washington has the same fight California is having over 20,000 suspected noncitizen ballots, now with names attached. Hobbs has eight days to decide whether he wants to check them.