DOJ News: Trump Asks Washington to Hold 400 Ballots
The Trump administration on Monday asked Washington state to set aside any ballots received from more than 400 people it suspects registered to vote without United States citizenship, escalating a federal campaign to challenge voter rolls one week before the midterm elections. The DOJ news landed in a letter from the Justice Department to the Washington Secretary of State’s Office, and it asked the state to hold the ballots until officials can confirm that the people who cast them are legally eligible to vote. The request covers a group the department says cast more than 1,500 votes in prior elections, and it arrives while voting in the midterm elections 2026 is already under way in Washington, where ballots have been sent out and returned.
The letter is the latest move by the administration to identify noncitizen voters, even though noncitizen voting is exceptionally rare in American elections. President Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to undermine public confidence in elections, and the request in Washington follows a similar Justice Department attempt to require California to sequester mail ballots from up to 20,000 people the federal government suspects may not be citizens. The Washington demand is smaller in scale than the California one, but it carries the same legal theory and the same timing: a federal demand to set aside ballots after voting has already begun, in a midterm election that will decide control of Congress.
Acting United States Attorney Neil Floyd announced the request at a news conference in Seattle on Monday, and his office framed it as the beginning of a wider effort rather than a single case. “We are asking the state to set aside those ballots until we can confirm they are legal voters,” Floyd said. The department said it had identified more than 400 people it believes registered to vote and voted in multiple elections without being citizens, and Floyd described the group as the “tip of the iceberg,” suggesting that further names could follow as the investigation continues.
What the Justice Department Asked Washington to Do
The Justice Department’s letter to the Washington Secretary of State’s Office asked the state to take two steps. The first was to set aside any ballots the more than 400 people might cast in next month’s midterm election until state officials can confirm that they are legally eligible to vote. The second was to give the federal government access to state voter records so it can compare its own list against the state’s information and determine how many of the people on the list actually cast ballots.
The department said it had identified 1,500 votes cast by the people on its list in prior elections. That figure covers multiple election cycles, and the department has not said how many of those votes were cast in federal elections or in which years they were cast. Washington has more than 5 million registered voters, so the group at the centre of the dispute represents a tiny fraction of the state’s electorate. The scale of the request is nevertheless significant, because it asks a state to hold ballots from named individuals on the basis of a federal list whose accuracy the state has not verified.
Floyd said much of the list was built on the basis of “recent contacts” with suspected noncitizens, because federal officers are now routinely checking to see whether the people they interact with are registered to vote. His office wants to compare that list against the state’s voter information because that comparison will help determine how many people actually cast ballots. Without access to those state records, proving that someone voted illegally will be a difficult and labor-intensive process, Floyd said, which is why the department is pressing the state for the records as well as for the ballots to be set aside.
The request does not accuse any individual by name in public, and it does not claim that any of the more than 400 people voted in the current election. It asks the state to act pre-emptively, holding any ballots they might cast in the midterm until their eligibility can be confirmed. That pre-emptive character is what makes the demand controversial: the ballots would be set aside before any determination has been made that the voters were ineligible, and before the state has had a chance to test the accuracy of the federal list.
How the List Was Built — and Why the State Is Pushing Back
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said on Monday that his office was reviewing the administration’s demand. His office noted that it had received about 60 subpoenas from the Justice Department since last month seeking information about voters, a volume of federal demands that Hobbs said his office was handling carefully. “We take our responsibility to protect voter information seriously and will only respond to requests that follow due process,” Hobbs said in an emailed statement. “We see what’s happening in California and don’t want Washingtonians to be harassed.”
Hobbs also challenged the timing of the request directly. “The timing of this request — one week before the General Election — is no doubt intended to cast unfounded suspicion on the results,” he said. The election is on November 3, and early voting and mail-in voting are already under way in Washington, a state that conducts its elections almost entirely by mail. A demand to set aside ballots in the final week of voting lands while ballots are already being cast and counted, and Hobbs’s statement framed that timing as deliberate rather than coincidental.
The state also raised questions about the quality of the material behind the demand. Hobbs’s office said that one of the records mentioned in the Justice Department’s letter dates from 1994, more than three decades old, which raises questions about how current the department’s information is. The department has said that many of the people on its list are lawful permanent residents or green-card holders, people who live and work legally in the United States but do not have the right to vote in federal elections. The distinction matters, because a lawful permanent resident who is on a voter roll may have been registered in error, or may never have voted at all, and the department’s own description of the list leaves open how many of the 400 people actually cast ballots.
The Justice Department did not immediately reply to a request for comment overnight, and it has not said what it will do if Washington refuses to set the ballots aside. The state’s position, as set out by Hobbs, is that it will only respond to requests that follow due process, which leaves open the possibility of a court fight if the department presses the demand further.
The California Precedent: 20,000 Ballots and a Court Fight
The Washington request does not stand alone. It is the second such demand in a matter of weeks, and the first — in California — is already the subject of litigation that has tested the department’s legal theory in court. The Justice Department asked California to sequester mail ballots from up to 20,000 people the federal government suspects may not be citizens, a demand that arrived after ballots had already been sent out and returned in that state as well. California has challenged the demand, and during rare Sunday arguments a panel of federal appellate judges questioned the timing, the constitutionality and the authority of the Justice Department’s request.
The legal question at the heart of both cases is who has the power to decide how an election is run. The Elections Clause of the United States Constitution gives state legislatures the power to set the time, place and manner of congressional elections, and the states have traditionally administered voter registration and ballot counting. The administration’s position is that the federal government has an interest in the integrity of federal elections and can demand that states set aside ballots from people it suspects are ineligible. The states’ position is that a federal demand to hold ballots on the basis of an unverified list is an intrusion into a power the Constitution assigns to them.
The California case has already shown how courts are likely to approach that question. The appellate judges who heard the case on Sunday pressed the department on why it was seeking to intervene after voting had begun, and on what authority it claimed to be able to direct a state to set aside ballots. The case is still being litigated, and the outcome will shape how the Washington demand is handled, because the two demands rest on the same theory and the same kind of list.
Midterm Elections 2026: Why the Timing Matters
The timing of the Washington demand is inseparable from the election calendar. The midterm elections 2026 are one week away, and the election on November 3 will decide control of the House and the Senate. Early voting is under way in many states, and mail-in voting has already begun in Washington, where voters receive their ballots by post and return them by mail or to a drop box. A demand to set aside ballots in the final week of the campaign lands at the moment when the most ballots are being cast, and when there is the least time to resolve a dispute about eligibility before the votes are counted.
That timing is also why the demand has become a political issue as well as a legal one. The administration has made election integrity a central theme of its campaigning in the final weeks before the election, and the president has repeatedly claimed that noncitizen voting is a widespread problem, even though studies and court cases have consistently found that noncitizen voting is exceptionally rare. The Democrats’ lawsuit argues that the administration is using the threat of prosecution and the demand to purge voter rolls to intimidate election officials and to cast doubt on the results of an election that has not yet happened.
For voters in Washington, the practical effect of the demand is limited for now. The state has not agreed to set any ballots aside, and the ballots of the more than 400 people named by the department will be counted unless the state or a court orders otherwise. But the demand has already had a political effect, because it has put the state’s election officials in the position of having to defend the integrity of their voter rolls in public, in the week before an election, on the basis of a federal list they have not verified.
What Happens Next
The next step is for the Washington Secretary of State’s Office to complete its review of the department’s letter and decide how to respond. Hobbs’s statement suggests that the state will not set ballots aside on the basis of a request that has not followed due process, and that it will resist any attempt to obtain voter information without a lawful basis. If the department presses the demand, the dispute is likely to end up in court, where a judge will have to decide whether the federal government can compel a state to hold ballots on the basis of an unverified list.
Either way, the Washington demand is a sign of how the midterm elections have become a legal contest as much as a political one. The administration’s request to set aside more than 400 ballots is a small number in a state with more than 5 million registered voters, but it is part of a wider campaign to involve the federal government in the running of an election that the Constitution leaves to the states. The courts will decide whether that campaign is a lawful defence of election integrity or an unlawful attempt to control an election, and that decision will be made while voters are already casting their ballots.
Source: The Washington Post