AI Generated Image (does not depict the actual Justice Department list or Washington ballots)
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs has refused a Justice Department demand to set aside the ballots of roughly 400 registered voters that federal prosecutors called noncitizens, saying a first review shows the DOJ noncitizen voter list includes U.S. citizens and “is not reliable.” In an Oct. 28 letter, Hobbs told the prosecutors that county officials will keep processing those ballots unless the department produces individualized proof that a particular voter is ineligible, which leaves green card holders, naturalized citizens and election officials waiting to see whether the government goes to court before the Nov. 3 election.
The response turns the Washington dispute, which this site covered when the demand first surfaced, into the same kind of standoff that played out in California, where a federal judge on Oct. 28 refused to let the Justice Department hold back about 20,000 ballots. As of Thursday afternoon, the department did not appear to have sued Washington, CBS News reported.
What the DOJ noncitizen voter list asked for, and what Hobbs found
The demand came in an Oct. 26 letter from two federal prosecutors in Washington, Neil Floyd and Pete Serrano. According to CBS News, they gave Hobbs 48 hours to review the names, determine citizenship and direct election workers not to count the ballots, warning that otherwise “the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief.” CBS also reported that the prosecutors described many of the people on the list as green card holders.
Hobbs’ reply goes after the list itself rather than the goal of keeping noncitizens off the rolls, which state law already requires. He wrote that the department sent a PDF of a printed spreadsheet with no voter ID numbers or addresses, that it contained duplicate entries, and that it gave no account of how the names were gathered. A “cursory review,” he said, found that “many of the persons on your list are United States citizens” and that a significant number are not currently registered or are on inactive status. His letter gives no count.
His legal argument rests on three points. Federal law makes it unlawful to willfully refuse to count a qualified voter’s ballot (52 U.S.C. 10307(a)). The National Voter Registration Act bars systematic voter-roll removals in the 90 days before a federal election, and Hobbs said the department offered nothing showing its list falls outside that rule. And Washington voters attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury each time they sign a ballot return envelope, with a separate state process for challenging an individual voter. The department, he wrote, “cannot rely on the mere absence of a name from the SAVE database,” the USCIS system election offices use to check immigration status.
Why immigrants and naturalized citizens have the most at stake
The fight over this list is not only about ballots. For a green card holder, voting in a federal election is a deportation ground under 8 U.S.C. 1227(a)(6), and a false claim of citizenship can bar a later green card or naturalization. The statute’s only relief is narrow: it covers someone whose parents are or were citizens, who lived in the U.S. before age 16 and who reasonably believed they were a citizen. That is why the Justice Department’s criminal voting cases this fall have fallen so heavily on permanent residents.
The risk runs the other way for naturalized citizens. SAVE checks immigration records, and Hobbs’ letter calls federal citizenship records “known to be unreliable,” citing an earlier court ruling. A list built largely on the absence of a SAVE match is likely to sweep in people whose records have not caught up with a later naturalization, and the citizens Hobbs says he found point to that risk. The same concern is behind a separate lawsuit filed Oct. 28 challenging USCIS’s Unlawful Voter Initiative. For anyone named, the open question is less whether a ballot gets counted than whether their name ends up in a criminal or immigration referral.
The department’s options are limited by the calendar. Ballots went out by Oct. 16, and more than 1.3 million had been returned as of Wednesday, according to CBS News. A suit modeled on the California case would run into the reasoning of U.S. District Judge David Carter, who wrote there that registered voters “must not be deprived of a core right merely because of unfounded allegations,” as CBS News reported.
Dates to watch
- Oct. 31: further briefing is due in the Washington, D.C., lawsuit in which Judge James Boasberg ordered the Justice Department to name the states it has pressed over alleged noncitizen voters, AP reported.
- By Nov. 2: Boasberg has said he will rule on whether such demands can continue before the election, according to AP.
- Nov. 3: Election Day, the practical deadline for any emergency filing against Washington.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources
- Washington Secretary of State, Steve Hobbs’ Oct. 28, 2026 response to the Justice Department letter on voter rolls
- CBS News, “U.S. citizens included on Justice Department list of alleged noncitizens, Washington says” (Oct. 29, 2026)
- Associated Press via U.S. News, “Judge presses the Trump administration for details on its campaign to stop noncitizens from voting” (Oct. 29, 2026)
- 8 U.S.C. 1227(a)(6), unlawful voting as a ground of deportability
- 52 U.S.C. 20507(c)(2), National Voter Registration Act 90-day rule
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