SEATTLE (AP) — The Trump administration on Monday asked Washington state to void all ballots received from more than 400 people it suspects registered to vote without U.S. citizenship.
In a letter to the secretary of state’s office in Washington, the Justice Department said it identified 1,500 votes cast by more than 400 people in previous elections. He asked the state to set aside any ballots citizens might cast in next month’s midterms until state officials can confirm they are legally eligible to vote. The state has more than 5 million registered voters.
“We are asking the state to void these ballots until we can confirm that they are legal voters,” Acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd said at a news conference.
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs was reviewing the administration’s request. His office said it has received about 60 subpoenas from the Justice Department since last month seeking voter information.
“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 we don’t want Washingtonians to be harassed.”
The effort is the administration’s latest to identify non-citizen voters, even though non-citizen voting is exceptionally rare. President Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to undermine public confidence in elections. Washington’s request is similar to the Justice Department’s attempt to require California to sequester the mail-in ballots of 20,000 people the federal government suspects may not be citizens.
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California challenged that, and in rare Sunday arguments a panel of federal appeals judges questioned the timing, constitutionality and authority of the Justice Department’s request. The Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures the authority to establish the time, place, and manner of congressional elections.
Monica Flores, Los Angeles County’s deputy registrar-recorder, said in a court filing that her staff reviewed a sample of 200 records from the Trump administration’s list. They found that the sample included canceled or inactive registrations, people with no voting history, and voters who appeared to be born in the United States.
The Justice Department said in Washington that it plans to send the state an additional list of people it suspects are not citizens before Election Day. He also noted that some of the people he suspects were registered without citizenship may have since been naturalized.
Investigations into past allegations from non-citizen voters have found far fewer cases than the Trump administration claimed. In Nevada, the Trump administration claimed there were 1,500 potential non-citizen voters on the rolls, but a subsequent investigation revealed no results.
In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, the Trump-supporting county recorder announced there were 207 possible noncitizens on the county rolls. The Republican county attorney determined there were actually eight.
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