Days before the midterm elections, a fight over who belongs on the voting lists has reached the Pacific Northwest. And the state’s top election official is pushing back.
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, that the state has no system to confirm whether people on Washington voter rolls are U.S. citizens when they register.
What did Steve Hobbs say about Washington voter rolls?
Speaking at a news conference in King County, Hobbs said the state does not have a way to identify whether someone is a noncitizen. Election officials can check some records, but no single database confirms citizenship for every voter.
He also said it is not unusual for some noncitizens to end up on voter rolls and that his office never claimed there were none. When suspected cases are found, his office has said, they are investigated and referred to county sheriffs and prosecutors.
Washington requires people registering to vote to swear under penalty of perjury that they are U.S. citizens, and voting by noncitizens in federal elections is a crime.
What does the Justice Department want?
Federal prosecutors said Monday they had identified more than 400 people on Washington voter rolls who they suspect are not citizens, and that those people had cast about 1,500 votes in past elections.
They asked Hobbs to set aside any ballots from those voters until their citizenship can be confirmed and gave him 48 hours to review the list. One prosecutor called the list just the tip of the iceberg, and the department said it expects to send another list before Election Day.
Prosecutors said much of the list came from recent encounters, as federal officers now routinely check whether people they deal with are registered to vote. Critics have questioned how accurate those checks are.
How did Hobbs respond to the list?
In a letter Wednesday, Hobbs said a preliminary review found that some people on the list are not registered to vote in Washington and that others are U.S. citizens. He called the list unreliable, citing duplicate entries and a record dating to 1994.
He asked for individual proof that specific voters are ineligible, saying it would be irresponsible and illegal for election officials to refuse to process a registered voter’s ballot without it. He said the federal list contained several glaring deficiencies.
His office has also received dozens of federal subpoenas in recent weeks seeking information about people on Washington voter rolls.
Why does the fight over Washington voter rolls matter?
The state Republican Party chair said the federal findings expose flaws in how people are added to Washington voter rolls through automatic registration and that the problem is likely larger.
Democrats and voting rights groups say the demands could confuse voters and wrongly flag eligible citizens on Washington voter rolls. Studies have found noncitizen voting to be rare.
Washington has clashed with the department before. Last month, a federal judge dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit against Hobbs seeking access to the state’s full voter data. The department has lost a long string of similar cases against states seeking voter data, according to reports.
How does this compare with California?
The department made a similar demand in California, seeking to set aside ballots from about 20,000 people it suspected were noncitizens. A federal appeals court rejected that effort, according to reports.
Hobbs’ response could set up a similar legal fight in Washington. Hobbs has said Washington elections are secure.
With ballots already arriving by mail across the state, the dispute over Washington voter rolls is likely to continue through Election Day. Washington conducts its elections almost entirely by mail.
