Federal authorities on Tuesday threatened Washington state election officials with criminal prosecution if they fail to prevent noncitizens from voting in this year’s federal elections.
In a seven-page letter, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon warned the election officers that they could be held criminally liable if they knowingly retain noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls or facilitate noncitizens in receiving and casting ballots.
Dhillon sent similar letters to several states. She’s giving Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs and election officials elsewhere five days to respond with how each is complying with a slew of long-standing federal laws that prohibit noncitizens from voting in elections.
Hobbs said his office is reviewing Dhillon’s request to determine its legality but added that the Department of Justice is “accelerating down a slippery slope of threatening personal legal action against election administrators.”
“Attempts to revive disproven claims of rigged elections will not deter election professionals from doing their job of overseeing accessible, accurate, auditable elections,” the Democratic secretary of state said in a statement late Tuesday.
The letter sets up the latest standoff between the Trump administration and Washington election officials. Trump has long railed against noncitizen voting without evidence, and sought state voter rolls to stave off electoral fraud, which is almost nonexistent. This despite election oversight being the purview of states and Congress.
Hobbs has repeatedly refused to provide the Trump administration with protected information included in voter data, like dates of birth, driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of social security numbers.
Washington is the subject of an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit for access to the state’s voter list, including sensitive personal information. Similar suits in other states have been tossed. A hearing on Washington’s request to dismiss the case here is set for August.
The only way a noncitizen could vote in WA state is if they literally steal or forge a ballot of a citizen. To register to vote, you already have to prove citizenship.
I know that’s not the point of what the DOJ is doing, but just had to say it.
Exactly. They’ve failed to prove more than a handful of cases in the entire country, which is less than citizens illegally voting, that number including a few politicians. If we’re going to start nailing people to the wall, perhaps we should start from the top.