Justice Department Asks Washington State to Set Aside Ballots of 405 Suspected Noncitizens

Federal prosecutors in Washington state asked Secretary of State Steve Hobbs on Monday, Oct. 26, to set aside ballots from 405 registered voters the Justice Department believes are not U.S. citizens, days before the midterm elections. Neil Floyd, acting U.S. attorney for the Western District, and Pete Serrano, the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District, said many of those listed are green-card holders, who have legal status but cannot vote in federal elections. They said some voted as recently as the August primaries, some have voted for more than a decade, and some voted as many as 27 times. Floyd estimated more than 1,500 ballots were illegally cast and called the 405 names "the tip of the iceberg." He said investigators found the voters by reviewing federal immigration records. The prosecutors asked that the voters' ballots be segregated until citizenship is confirmed. Hobbs said his office would review the letter and respond only to requests that follow due process. His office said noncitizen voting is rare, that voters attest to eligibility on ballot envelopes, and that the federal system could wrongly flag citizens. The move follows a DOJ effort to set aside about 20,000 mail-in ballots in Los Angeles County.

CBS News, on the left, leads with the request and frames it as an expansion of the Justice Department's efforts to question state voter rolls just before the midterms, with Floyd's and Serrano's claims placed alongside the green-card detail. ZeroHedge's coverage, which closely tracks the DOJ statement and Hobbs's reply, includes his complaint about the timing and the warning about harassment. The New York Post and Fox News, on the right, lead with the DOJ announcement that more than 400 noncitizens are illegally registered, and feature Floyd's interview, voting histories dating to the late 1980s or early 1990s and the 27-vote maximum. They tie the story to the Los Angeles County case and to immigration officials' report of dozens of arrests nationwide. Both sides quote Floyd's "tip of the iceberg" line and note the green-card detail. They differ in framing: the left treats the claims as allegations tied to election timing, while the right treats them as findings of illegal registration.