U.S. citizens included on DOJ list of 400 alleged noncitizens, Washington says

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs has rejected a Justice Department list of 400 people it says are noncitizens registered to vote in the state, telling federal officials that many of those named are in fact U.S. citizens. The dispute comes days before the Nov. 3 elections, with more than 1.3 million mail ballots already returned as of Wednesday, according to CBS News.

U.S. attorneys Neil Floyd and Pete Serrano had written Hobbs on Monday, asking that ballots from the listed individuals be set aside until citizenship was confirmed. They said many were green-card holders, who cannot vote in federal contests, and gave a 48-hour window before threatening to seek emergency relief. Hobbs replied that the list was unverified and that skipping a registered voter's ballot without individual proof of ineligibility would be illegal. He said some entries were duplicates, others were people not currently registered or with inactive registrations, and the Justice Department disclosed nothing about its sources. The spreadsheet also lacked voter ID numbers and addresses.

A similar demand involving 20,000 people in California, sent by Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter, failed in court Wednesday night when Judge David Carter denied the department's request for a temporary order.

Summarized by PolitiKool from CBS News’s reporting. Read the full story at CBS News →