The Trump administration expanded its crusade against mail-in voting states by demanding Washington sequester some 400 ballots of people on its voter rolls that prosecutors said appear to be noncitizens.
The state’s two U.S. attorneys said Monday they will provide the list to Washington’s secretary of state and asked that any ballots sent back by those voters be kept separate and uncounted until their citizenship status can be determined.
“Washington is now on notice that non-citizens are voting. It is up to the state to take action to make sure that they are not allowing these non-citizens to vote illegally,” the U.S. attorney’s office in Seattle said.
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The demand is similar to one made by the Trump administration to California, where U.S. officials say they sent a list of 20,000 names of potential noncitizens.
The federal Justice Department has sued to try to enforce the blockade on the names being counted.
That effort suffered an initial setback Monday evening when an appeals court refused to order an immediate sequester of the California ballots. That same appeals court also oversees Washington.
Prosecutors said many of the names on the list they will forward are legal immigrants, though here in permanent lawful status.
That’s on the pathway to citizenship but it is not the same as citizenship. Federal law limits voting in national elections to citizens.
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