Washington's top election official admitted Thursday that noncitizens are on the state's voter rolls and conceded the state has no way to identify them — yet insisted the problem is rare. The contradiction lays bare what Acting U.S. Attorney Charles Neil Floyd called a system that knowingly sends ballots to noncitizens and just hopes they don't vote.
Secretary of State Steve Hobbs made the admission after rejecting a federal request to segregate ballots from hundreds of suspected noncitizens pending citizenship verification. Federal prosecutors identified 405 suspected noncitizens tied to more than 1,500 ballots cast in previous Washington elections. Hobbs disputes the list's accuracy, claiming it includes citizens and flawed entries.
Pressed by KOMO News reporter Jeremy Harris on how he can characterize noncitizen voting as rare without checking citizenship, Hobbs could only cite 15 detected cases going back to 1982 — more than four decades.
"How can you make that claim that this is not a widespread issue, when by your own admission the state's not checking this?" Harris asked.
Hobbs deflected to signature problems and late postmarks. Harris pressed again: "But if you're not checking, how do you know it's not a widespread issue?"
"Well, look, again, people attest to this every single time," Hobbs responded.
Hobbs ultimately acknowledged: "I do know that there are non-citizens that do show up in the rolls. But the question is, are they actually voting? That is a crime."
Floyd wasn't buying it. "There is no longer ANY doubt that ballots are being sent to non-citizens," he said in an October 29 statement. "The only questions are how many illegal votes are being counted in Washington and what will the state do about it."
He added: "They are knowingly sending out ballots to non-citizens and trusting that the non-citizens will not fill out the ballot."
Hobbs refused to share voter rolls with the DOJ, citing federal privacy protections and court decisions. He offered to work with investigators using publicly available data instead.
The scope of the problem may be larger than 15 cases suggest. Blaine immigration attorney Len Saunders told KUOW that erroneous registration among green-card holders is "not unusual" and that dozens have contacted him in recent months fearing deportation over registration or voting issues.
The system Hobbs describes is straightforward: the state registers people, mails them ballots, and trusts self-attestation. When asked how he knows that trust is justified, he has no answer — because the state deliberately doesn't check. The question isn't whether noncitizens are on the rolls. Hobbs concedes that. It's how many, and whether anyone in authority actually wants to find out.
