Federal prosecutors said Monday that investigators have identified 405 people they believe are not U.S. citizens who voted in Washington state elections, casting more than 1,500 ballots across multiple elections.
Neil Floyd, acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, said federal officials have sent the lists to state election officials and asked them to hold those voters’ ballots until their eligibility can be checked.
Floyd said investigators were confident in their findings but believed the number of non-citizens voting in Washington could be much higher:
Through our investigations, we have a high degree of confidence that non-citizens are voting in federal and state elections in Washington State. So far, we have identified more than 400 non-citizens who voted in Washington, many of whom have voted multiple times. This means that we have found over 1,500 ballots to be illegal. That’s not the full number of noncitizens who voted in Washington. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Based on the small sample we have collected so far, I believe we are looking at thousands of non-citizens who voted in Washington.
Floyd did not provide statewide statistics to support his estimate of thousands of noncitizens voting. The 1,500 ballots he cited were allegedly cast over several decades, according to investigative reports.
The request comes ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Floyd said Homeland Security investigators compared publicly available Washington voter rolls with federal records to identify registered voters they believed were not citizens. Then they check whether these people voted.
He said investigators had to run multiple checks to make sure the records pointed to the same person, making the work very time-consuming.
Washington has refused to provide the federal government with its complete database of voter registration data, including personally identifiable information. Freud said:
Washington has refused to share a complete list of registered voters that includes identifying information. We basically had to do this one person at a time. This could be done more efficiently if we had access to the complete database maintained in Washington. We simply compare Washington’s message with our message, and the results are immediate.
Floyd said his office will pursue criminal charges against illegal voters and those who knowingly help them vote.
Last week, Breitbart News reported that Los Angeles County officials told a court that they could not independently verify a voter’s citizenship status beyond what they noted on their registration form.
The Justice Department is suing California to prevent the state from counting mail-in ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters who federal officials believe may not be citizens until their citizenship status is verified. California officials have questioned the evidence behind the list.