Washington found U.S. citizens on Trump DOJ's "noncitizen" voter list."

Six days before the Nov. 3 midterms, the Trump Justice Department handed Washington's top election official a list of 405 people it calls noncitizen voters, gave him 24 hours to review it, and told him not to count their ballots. Comply, the department said, or we'll see you in court.

Secretary of State Steve Hobbs (D) did review it. He found U.S. citizens on it.

What DOJ actually sent

The Oct. 26 letter came from Acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd in Seattle and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Pete Serrano in Spokane. It says the Department of Homeland Security identified more than 400 people who "are or were noncitizens" and who, "with a high level of confidence," voted in Washington elections, more than 1,500 times in all. Then, tucked in parentheses, the letter concedes the people on it "may have subsequently naturalized."

Naturalized citizens are citizens. They get to vote. DOJ asked a state to sideline ballots from people its letter admits may be eligible to cast them.

Hobbs' Oct. 28 response reads like a senior partner marking up a first-year associate's memo. According to Hobbs, the list arrived as a PDF of a printed spreadsheet, the bureaucratic equivalent of faxing a photo of your screen. It left out voter ID numbers and addresses, the details you need to match a name to a registration. It had duplicate entries. Many people on it aren't registered or are inactive, so they won't get ballots at all, and his office says one record dates to 1994. DOJ offered no sources and no supporting documents. The letter even listed Election Day as Nov. 2. It's Nov. 3.

When you accuse a state of letting fraud slide, knowing the date of the election is the bare minimum.

The law isn't on DOJ's side

Start with who runs elections. The Constitution's Elections Clause gives states the power to set the times, places and manner of congressional elections, and gives Congress, not the Justice Department, the power to override them. Congress has passed plenty of election laws. None lets a U.S. attorney order a state to stop counting ballots by letter.

DOJ leans on 18 U.S.C. § 611, which makes it a crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. That's a criminal statute, enforced the way criminal statutes are: investigate a person, charge a person, prove it in court. It doesn't hand the executive branch a veto over a state's count. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter said as much Wednesday when he rejected DOJ's near-identical bid to set aside ballots tied to 20,000 Californians. "Federal law is enforced by the federal government," he wrote, pointing out that DOJ remains free to prosecute anyone who votes illegally.

Federal law actually cuts the other way. The Voting Rights Act makes it illegal for anyone acting under color of law to willfully refuse to tabulate a qualified voter's ballot (52 U.S.C. § 10307(a)). Hobbs cited it, and sequestering a citizen's ballot on the strength of a PDF is a fine way to land on the wrong side of it. He also noted that DOJ never showed its list falls outside the National Voter Registration Act's 90-day quiet period, which bars systematic voter-roll purges that close to a federal election.

Carter put the sovereignty point best: "the Executive would have this Court believe that it reigns as a sole sovereign. But California and its people are sovereign, too." So are Washington's.

The timing tells you the point

Washington mailed ballots to active voters by Oct. 16. The list arrived 10 days later, announced at a press conference a week before Election Day. If DOJ had real concerns, Hobbs wrote, "the time to raise them was months ago."

Courts keep saying the same thing. In the California case, a Ninth Circuit majority that included a Trump appointee called DOJ's emergency "a self-constructed one," and Carter wrote that its eleventh-hour predicament was "solely due to its own neglect." The Supreme Court's Purcell doctrine warns federal courts against changing election rules on the eve of a vote because late changes confuse voters and poll workers. DOJ is asking for exactly that kind of late change, in two states, in the same month.

So why do it? We can't read minds. But forecasters, and even a Republican senator speaking to The Hill, have said for months that Trump's party is likely to lose the House. Floyd called the 405 names "only the tip of the iceberg," and a second list is expected before Election Day. A legal theory that loses in court can still work outside it. It tells county election workers they could face federal scrutiny for doing their jobs. It tells naturalized citizens their ballots are suspect. Carter warned of that "chilling effect on election workers and voters alike." Hobbs saw it coming: on Monday he said Washington had watched what happened in California and didn't want its voters harassed.

Call it what you want. It works like intimidation.

The other side

DOJ's position is that noncitizen voting is a federal crime, that federal law enforcement identified these voters, and that some have voted for more than a decade. "We're the federal government. We know the answer to that question," Floyd told reporters. Washington GOP Chair Jim Walsh says the list exposes a flaw in the state's automatic voter registration.

Fine. If DOJ can prove a specific person voted illegally, it should charge that person. Washington already makes false registration a felony, and every voter re-signs a citizenship declaration under penalty of perjury on every ballot envelope. Hobbs asked DOJ for individualized proof. He's still waiting.

A credibility problem DOJ built itself

"We know the answer" only works if you can show your work. In California, Carter found DOJ's list not credible after the department waited until the night before the hearing to reveal it had relied on LexisNexis data. In Washington, it sent a printed spreadsheet with the wrong Election Day on the cover letter. Every weak list DOJ waves at a state spends credibility it will need the day it brings a real case, with judges and with the voters it claims to be protecting.

Washington voters can track their ballots at VoteWA.gov. The people trying to sideline those ballots are betting you'll assume yours won't count. Prove them wrong.

Sources

• Washington state finds U.S. citizens on DOJ's noncitizen voter list, rejects demand to set aside ballots, Democracy Docket
• Hobbs rebuffs DOJ's demand to hold ballots, calls list unreliable and timing suspect, Lynnwood Times
• Washington secretary of state says DOJ's claims of noncitizens voting 'deeply flawed', KOMO News
• Department of Justice claims it found 400 non-citizens on Washington voter rolls, KOMO News
• WA Secretary of State blasts DOJ over claims that 400+ 'non-citizens' voted in mid-terms, KIRO 7
• Trump admin demands Washington set aside 400 ballots it claims are from noncitizen voters, ABC News
• Order Denying Temporary Restraining Order, United States v. State of California, No. 2:26-cv-12025 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 28, 2026), U.S. District Court
• Judge rejects DOJ demand that California set aside 20,000 ballots, Democracy Docket
• Appeals court rejects Trump DOJ demand to set aside 20,000 California mail ballots, CNN
• Republican lawmakers grow alarmed over signs of 2026 election wipeout, The Hill
• 52 U.S.C. § 10307, Cornell LII
• 52 U.S.C. § 20507, Cornell LII
• 18 U.S.C. § 611, Cornell LII
• Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1 (2006), Justia