Voting rights groups are taking the Trump administration to court over what they call a secret voter list targeting ballots days before the election.
OneAmerica Votes, the Latino Community Fund of Washington State and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union sued in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle. Their complaint accuses President Donald Trump, Attorney General Todd Blanche, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and federal prosecutors of a "flagrantly unlawful, chilling, eleventh-hour operation" aimed at voters and the election officials who count their ballots.
According to the complaint, Charles Neil Floyd, the acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, and Simon Peter Serrano, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, sent Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs a list of about 400 registered voters on Oct. 26. The letter said federal agencies believe the voters "are or were noncitizens" while conceding they "may have subsequently naturalized." It gave Hobbs 48 hours to instruct county officials not to verify signatures on or tabulate those ballots.
The same day, the groups allege, Floyd warned at a press conference that anyone who "assists someone in voting illegally would be also guilty of that crime under the aiding abetting theory." Serrano later added, "We want to make sure these ballots aren't counted," acknowledging the demand would put county auditors "in a pickle."
The plaintiffs argue the list is "not evidence of anything." Hobbs found after a preliminary review that it contained many U.S. citizens as well as "a significant number of people" who were not registered or were inactive, the complaint states. Floyd himself acknowledged at the press conference that "many of them are telling us, 'Yeah, I never filled out a ballot.'" The Justice Department's letter also got the date of Election Day wrong, listing it as Nov. 2 rather than Nov. 3.