DOJ Requests Washington State Set Aside Ballots From 400 Alleged Noncitizens
The Justice Department's pre-election intervention in Washington state tests the legal boundary between federal voter-roll enforcement authority and state election administration.
The U.S. Department of Justice has asked Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs to set aside ballots cast by approximately 400 individuals federal prosecutors allege are not U.S. Citizens, according to a CBS News report published October 27, 2026. The DOJ transmitted a letter to the secretary of state's office containing a list of the 400 names.
The action comes eight days before the November 2026 midterm elections, a timing that carries procedural significance. Washington conducts elections entirely by mail under state law (RCW 29A.40.010), meaning ballots are already in transit or in voters' hands at the time of the federal request.
Federal prosecutors did not publicly specify in available reporting which database or investigative method produced the list of 400 names. The source document that would detail that methodology is the letter sent to the secretary of state's office. As of publication, that letter has not been released in full to the public.
Noncitizen voting in federal elections is prohibited under 18 U.S.C. Section 611, which carries a penalty of up to one year in prison. Washington state law mirrors that prohibition under RCW 29A.08.170, which restricts voter registration to U.S. Citizens. How the 400 individuals came to be registered, if they are in fact registered, is not addressed in available reporting.
The secretary of state's office response to the DOJ letter was not detailed in the CBS News report. What action, if any, the office has taken or plans to take is unknown. The public record that would answer that question is any written correspondence from the secretary of state's office to the DOJ, or a formal statement from the office.
The DOJ's Election Crimes Branch, which sits within the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division, handles federal election law enforcement. That unit has pursued noncitizen voting cases in prior election cycles across both Republican and Democratic administrations. In 2019, for example, the DOJ brought charges in cases involving noncitizen voter registration in states including Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
The scale of the current claim, 400 individuals in a single state identified in a single letter, is larger than most individual prosecutions but smaller than systemic audit findings in some prior state-level reviews. A 2017 Government Accountability Office report (GAO-17-624) found that determining the precise number of noncitizens who vote is difficult because federal databases used for cross-checking, including the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program, are not uniformly accessed by all states during voter registration.
Washington state began using the SAVE database to cross-check voter registrations as part of a broader national trend. Whether the DOJ list was derived from SAVE data, from another federal database, or from an independent investigation is not stated in available reporting.
The request places the Washington secretary of state in a position of weighing a federal law enforcement communication against the state's own election timeline and due-process obligations to registered voters. Voters whose ballots are set aside would, under Washington administrative rules, typically receive notification and an opportunity to cure a challenged ballot.
No charges against any of the 400 individuals have been announced as of publication. The public records that would clarify the legal basis and evidentiary standard used by the DOJ are: the full text of the letter to the secretary of state, any court filing if the DOJ seeks a judicial order, and the index of names and their registration records held by the Washington Secretary of State's office.