Federal prosecutors in Washington state told the Secretary of State on Monday that 405 noncitizens are registered to vote and have cast more than 1,500 ballots, and asked him to set their ballots aside one week before the Nov. 3 election. The headlines read as a finding of fact. The U.S. Attorney's own release says the people on the list "appear to be illegally registered," and says some green card holders were registered "against their knowledge."
What the letter and the press conference actually claim
Acting U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd (Western District) and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Pete Serrano (Eastern District) sent Secretary of State Steve Hobbs a list of 405 names and asked him to segregate any ballots from those voters until citizenship is confirmed. CBS News reported that the letter set a 48-hour window and warned that otherwise "the United States will have no choice but to seek emergency relief." KHQ put the deadline at noon today, Oct. 28.
At the press conference Floyd said, "With the highest level of confidence I have, these are people that are registered to vote, have voted, and are not citizens," as KOMO recorded. He called the 405 "only the tip of the iceberg" and said a second list from the Department of Homeland Security is coming.
Main Justice in Washington, D.C. The letter came from the two U.S. Attorney's offices in Washington state, not from headquarters. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress (public domain).
The release uses softer language than the headlines
The written release from the U.S. Attorney's Office, as it was posted on justice.gov, describes more than 400 people "who appear to be illegally registered to vote." It does not describe how the names were found. It does not link the letter or the list. I could not find either one public, and ABC News said it had not seen the letter.
What the release does say is that some green card holders told prosecutors they were registered "against their knowledge" through Washington's Motor Voter program, then received a ballot in the mail and assumed they were eligible. Floyd repeated that at the podium: "People are telling us, 'I got a ballot in the mail, I thought I was eligible to vote.'"
That matters for the criminal side. The release says the felonies in play, fraudulent registration and false statements in a naturalization application, require someone to knowingly and willfully lie under oath, with a five-year maximum. Floyd told KOMO it is too early to say whether anyone will be charged, and noted the cases can be hard to prove. A noncitizen who was signed up by a state agency and mailed a ballot has cast an ineligible vote, which is a problem. Whether that person committed the crime the release describes is a separate question the release does not answer.
How the 405 were found, and where the list is soft
Floyd told KOMO agents have been questioning noncitizen detainees and people crossing the border about whether they voted, then cross-referencing that with federal immigration databases and public voter registration information. CBS reported DHS compared a public list of Washington registrants against government records. Floyd said it is being done "essentially one person at a time," and that "it would be easier if we had the entire voter roll."
Hobbs's office says one record on the list is from 1994, and CBS reports the list shows multiple people who last voted in the 1990s. The office also says the matching system "frequently flags legitimate U.S. citizens as noncitizens." Hobbs told KOMO, "A lot of them, or some of them, actually have citizenship." That is the state's claim, and the state has not published examples. It is also the claim that settles the matter if it is true of even a handful of the 405.
Hobbs's other number deserves the same caution. He said on a TVW program that there were 15 instances of noncitizen voting in Washington from 1982 to 2025. The U.S. Attorneys say 405 people. Both cannot be right, or they are counting different things, and neither side has shown its work.
Official record
Why DOJ is working from a DHS match instead of the state's file: United States v. Hobbs, No. C25-6078-KKE (W.D. Wash.), Order Granting Motions to Dismiss, Dkt. 96, filed Sept. 22, 2026. DOJ had sued for Washington's full unredacted voter list.
"The Court concludes that the Government's demand for voter data violates federal law." — Order, p. 2
Read or download the full 11-page order (PDF). The order lists more than two dozen other districts that dismissed the same claim; the Secretary of State posted it.
Can a state set aside ballots a week out?
Hobbs says federal law bars removing voters within 90 days of a federal election. The statute he is pointing to, 52 U.S.C. 20507(c)(2)(A), requires states to finish "any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters" by that cutoff. DOJ is asking to hold ballots, not to purge names, and I found no court that has ruled on whether that distinction matters here. That is an open question, not a settled win for either side.
The Legislative Building in Olympia, where the Secretary of State's office is based. Photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress (public domain).
What to watch
Washington votes entirely by mail, and more than a million ballots were already in by Tuesday out of more than 5 million registered voters, per USA Today. As of Tuesday reports, DOJ had sent a letter and had not filed a lawsuit. In California the same request went to court and the Ninth Circuit said the emergency was in part "self-constructed." I have not seen what Hobbs sent back today.
The fair test is simple. If the U.S. Attorneys hand over names with proof, and a state that signs people up automatically has noncitizens on its rolls, that is a real finding and a real failure of the registration system. If the list falls apart on contact with the records, as the 1994 entry suggests it might in places, the damage is already done a week before the election. The names are the evidence, and so far nobody outside the two offices has seen them.
