Federal Prosecutors Say 405 Noncitizens Cast Over 1,500 Ballots in Washington State

Federal prosecutors announced Monday that an investigation has identified 405 people believed to be noncitizens who voted in Washington state elections, allegedly casting more than 1,500 ballots across multiple election cycles.

Neil Floyd, the acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, said his office has sent the names of those individuals to state election officials and asked that any ballots tied to them be set aside while their eligibility is verified.

Floyd said he is confident in the findings so far but believes the true scale of noncitizen voting in the state is far larger than what investigators have documented.

Through our investigation, we have confirmed with high confidence that non-citizens are voting in the state of Washington in federal and state elections. Thus far, we have identified over 400 non-citizens who have voted in Washington, and many of them have voted multiple times. That means we have identified over 1,500 ballots illegally cast. This is not the full number of non-citizens who have been voting in Washington. This is only the tip of the iceberg. With a small sample that we have collected so far, I’m confident that we are looking at thousands of non-citizens who have been voting in Washington.

Floyd did not offer a statewide total to back up his estimate that thousands of noncitizens may have voted. According to a report on the investigation, the 1,500 ballots he referenced were allegedly cast over the course of several decades.

The announcement comes just over a week before the November 3 midterm elections.

How the Investigation Worked

Floyd said investigators with the Department of Homeland Security cross-referenced publicly available Washington voter lists against federal records to flag registered voters they believe are not U.S. citizens, then checked whether those individuals had actually cast ballots.

He said the process required multiple rounds of verification to confirm that records matched the same person, which has slowed the pace of the review.

Washington state has not turned over its complete voter registration database, including personal identifying information, to federal investigators. Floyd said that has forced his office to work through cases individually rather than running a full comparison.

Washington has refused to share the complete list of registered voters with identifying information. We are having to do this essentially one person at a time. If we had access to the full database maintained by Washington, this could be done much more efficiently. We could simply compare Washington’s information to ours and it would yield immediate results.

Floyd said his office intends to pursue criminal charges against people who vote illegally, as well as anyone who knowingly helps noncitizens cast ballots.

Part of a Broader Pattern

The Washington findings follow a similar dispute in California, where the Justice Department has sued to block the state from counting mailed ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters federal officials have identified as likely noncitizens, pending verification of their citizenship. California officials have pushed back on the evidence behind that list. Separately, Los Angeles County officials told a court last week that they are unable to independently verify voters’ citizenship beyond what is self-reported on registration forms.