Trump administration sued over federal efforts to set aside WA ballots

Three organizations have sued the Trump administration after federal officials this week called on Washington state to set aside 400 ballots that it had claimed were sent to ineligible voters.

On Monday, acting U.S. Attorney for Western Washington Charles Neil Floyd announced that he had alerted Secretary of State Steve Hobbs about potentially illegal voters and urged him to take swift action.

In a news conference, Floyd said an investigation revealed “with high confidence” that noncitizens “are voting in the state of Washington in state and federal elections, and many of them have voted multiple times.”

On Friday, the Latino Community Fund of Washington State, OneAmerica Votes, and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union sued to block the federal demand to set aside those ballots.

“Defendants’ list is not evidence of anything, and their deeply chilling threats of federal penalty for election officials and others who fail to conform to their demands are baseless,” according to the complaint.

“By their own account, their list was assembled by trying to match federal immigration records against publicly available voter lists that lack the identifying information needed to know whether the person in one database is the same person as in the other,” it added.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Western Washington, seeks among other things to stop the U.S. Department of Justice’s directive that the ballots be set aside. It also requests the court and plaintiffs be notified within 24 hours if federal authorities release any other voter lists or related demands.

In addition to Floyd, the lawsuit names as defendants President Donald Trump, U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Pete Serrano, the first assistant for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Washington.

Monday’s announcement drew a swift response from Hobbs. The secretary of state’s office performed a “preliminary analysis” of the DOJ list and found many people who are U.S. citizens on it, and a significant number who aren’t registered to vote at all.

“This list includes United States citizens and is not reliable,” Hobbs responded in a letter on Wednesday. “Without individualized proof of ineligibility, it would be both irresponsible and illegal for election officials to decline to process a registered voter’s ballot.”

Reached for comment Saturday, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Western District of Washington pointed to a statement released Thursday by Floyd. That statement highlighted remarks from Hobbs acknowledging the state can’t always tell if a voter is a noncitizen.

“They are knowingly sending out ballots to non-citizens and trusting that the non-citizens will not fill out the ballot,” Floyd said in that statement.

Registering noncitizens to vote, with or without their knowledge, could jeopardize their ability to become citizens, he added.

“Secretary Hobbs should be concerned,” Floyd said, “about the non-citizens Washington is subjecting to potential criminal prosecution and adverse immigration consequences.”

With just days before the midterm elections, Washington’s experience with the federal government is not unique.

In California, more than 4 in 10 names flagged as possible noncitizen voters by the Trump administration cannot be found on the state’s voter rolls, according to a legal filing Saturday by an immigrant rights group.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.