10
Loading video...
By Lars Hanson
Associate News Editor
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) wants Washington state election officials to hold back the ballots of more than 400 voters it alleges are noncitizens—while its own letter concedes that some of those voters "may have subsequently naturalized."
The 405 ballots the department wants set aside, in other words, could belong to U.S. citizens.
On Monday, the day before Election Day, three civic and labor groups asked a federal judge in Seattle for an emergency order blocking the demand.
Read More on News
Their lawsuit, filed Friday, argues the Trump administration has no legal power to tell a state which lawfully cast ballots to count. It also says the administration is using the threat of prosecution to frighten election workers and naturalized voters.
Why It Matters
States administer elections in the U.S., while federal prosecutors can investigate and charge people suspected of violating federal election laws. But in the final weeks of the 2026 midterms, the DOJ has tried something rarer: telling states, before the votes are counted, which ballots to set aside.
Washington is the third state where the DOJ has gone to court or threatened to this fall over how votes are counted. In California, it sought to have ballots from more than 20,000 people it identified as likely noncitizens segregated; the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration's request Monday evening.
...
In Alaska, it tried to block certification of the Senate race over a dispute about two candidates named Dan Sullivan, and a judge dismissed the case Sunday. So far, every court to rule in these cases has turned the government down.
The groups say the risk falls hardest on naturalized citizens. Federal records may not reflect that a green-card holder later became a citizen, they argue, and Washington’s elections office has said the federal system that the DOJ relies on frequently flags legitimate U.S. citizens. The DOJ’s letter acknowledges the possibility in its own words. It does not say how many people on its list might be affected.
What DOJ Demanded
Pete Serrano, the top federal prosecutor in eastern Washington, signed the October 26 letter to Secretary of State Steve Hobbs and announced it alongside Neil Floyd, acting U.S. attorney in Seattle.
It said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had identified more than 400 people who were registered to vote in Washington despite not being citizens, and who had cast more than 1,500 ballots between them, some as recently as the August primary. It gave the state 24 hours to check the names and a deadline of noon October 28 to reply.
The core request was blunt. If anyone on the list returned a ballot, county officials were not to verify the signature or count it until the person's citizenship was settled. If Washington did not comply, the letter warned, the United States "will have no choice but to seek emergency relief."
The letter said only that the DHS had identified the names “through the efforts of our federal law enforcement partners.” Floyd offered more at the news conference. Agents, he said, had been questioning noncitizen detainees and people crossing the border about whether they had voted, then checking that against federal immigration databases and public voter rolls. “We are having to do this essentially one person at a time,” he said, according to KOMO.
The letter also promised more. Prosecutors said they expected "imminently" to receive a second list and to send it before what they called the "November 2, 2026 General Election." Election Day is November 3.
A List With Holes
The sentence at the center of the case sits in the letter's own description of the people it names. They "are or were noncitizens," it says, before adding in parentheses: "they may have subsequently naturalized."
Washington's review found more problems. In an October 28 reply, Hobbs said a preliminary check showed the list "includes United States citizens and is not reliable." The DOJ had sent a PDF of a printed spreadsheet rather than a data file. It left out voter identification numbers and addresses, which officials need to match a name to a registration. One record dated to 1994, his office said.
...
A declaration from Stuart Holmes, the state’s director of elections, cited in Monday’s court filing, puts numbers on the gaps. Federal prosecutors have publicly put the list at 405 names; the state counted 403 unique people on it. At least 62 of them had not been sent a ballot at all, because their registrations were canceled or inactive or the state could not find them.
Floyd himself acknowledged limits. According to the complaint, which quotes a transcript of his news conference, he described the list as covering "a very tiny population of people that we have made contact with recently." He allowed that "there might be a lot of John Does." And he said some people on it had told agents they never filled out a ballot.
The Lawsuit
OneAmerica Votes and the Latino Community Fund of Washington State both work largely with immigrant and Latino voters. They sued October 30 in federal court in Seattle, joined by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Represented by Elias Law Group, they named President Donald Trump, the DOJ, DHS, Floyd and Serrano, among others.
The groups argue that the Constitution leaves election administration to the states and that no federal law lets prosecutors order ballots held back. Many of their members are naturalized citizens who, the groups say, would never know their ballot had been set aside. On Monday, they asked U.S. District Judge Jamal N. Whitehead for an emergency order. As of Monday evening, no hearing had been publicly scheduled.
What People Are Saying
Newsweek asked the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle on Monday whether the second list had been sent, whether the DOJ would oppose the emergency motion, what its next steps in Washington were and how it responded to the state’s findings. The office said it does not comment on pending litigation and does not expect to say more until after the election. It pointed instead to a statement Floyd issued Thursday, before the lawsuit was filed.
In that statement, Floyd wrote that Washington is “knowingly sending out ballots to non-citizens and trusting that the non-citizens will not fill out the ballot.” Washington does not require documentary proof of citizenship to register; voters attest to it when they sign up.
Abha Khanna, a partner at Elias Law Group, called the demand “unlawful intimidation of election officials, plain and simple.”
What Happens Next
Washington votes by mail, and ballots postmarked by Tuesday will be counted for days afterward, so the fight is likely to outlast Election Day. A ruling from Whitehead, the promised second list or a DOJ lawsuit against the state could all come during the count.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Steven Frank and Edward T. Cummins
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines