SPOKANE, Wash. — The Department of Justice is asking Washington to withhold over 400 ballots from people they say are not U.S. citizens just one week before the midterm elections.
“With the highest level of confidence I have, these are people that are registered to vote, have voted and are not citizens,” said acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd.
Federal prosecutors say non-citizens have illegally cast over 1,500 ballots. Even though they are allowed to be here and have Green Cards, they are not U.S. citizens.
The U.S. Attorneys of Western and Eastern Washington sent a list of 405 people they say illegally registered to vote to the Secretary of State. They are asking the Secretary of State to withhold their ballots until their status is confirmed.
“Right now, what we’re doing is we’re taking our information and trying to see if it’s on their list, and that’s a very difficult process,” Floyd said.
Similar requests are being made across the nation with the administration requesting complete voter rolls from at least 30 other states.
In this case, the DOJ says it found the 405 number because it compared a list of registered voters with the Department of Homeland Security.
The prosecutors gave Secretary of State Steve Hobbs 48 hours to go over the list of voters and confirm whether they are U.S. citizens and say if he doesn’t, they will seek “emergency relief.”
The DOJ made similar requests to California. When the state didn’t meet the deadline, it asked the appeals court to step in. The appeals court rejected this request.
“We have won in court every single time,” Hobbs said. “They have not won a single case.”
Hobbs says the process being used by the DOJ to verify citizenship is meant to create doubt around midterm elections. The list had records for people who voted over 30 years ago, including someone whose most recent vote was cast in 1994.
“A lot of them, or some of them actually had citizenship so I don’t know where they’re getting their names from,” said Hobbs.
Hobbs has until Wednesday to respond, but the DOJ has not filed a lawsuit in Washington yet.
COPYRIGHT 2026 BY KXLY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
