SEATTLE — Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs fired back at the Trump administration Wednesday, accusing the Justice Department of compiling a “deeply flawed” list of purported noncitizens who are registered to vote and saying it would be both “irresponsible and illegal” to not count votes based on the list. Hobbs, in a letter to the two lead federal attorneys in Washington, accused the ...

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, said a Justice Department list of alleged noncitizens contained "glaring deficiencies."

Ken Lambert/The Seattle Times/TNS

SEATTLE — Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs fired back at the Trump administration Wednesday, accusing the Justice Department of compiling a “deeply flawed” list of purported noncitizens who are registered to vote and saying it would be both “irresponsible and illegal” to not count votes based on the list.

Hobbs, in a letter to the two lead federal attorneys in Washington, accused the Justice Department of bad faith and urged them to provide proof that the people on their list are, in fact, incorrectly or illegally registered to vote.

“This list includes United States citizens and is not reliable,” Hobbs wrote Wednesday. “Without individualized proof of ineligibility, it would be both irresponsible and illegal for election officials to decline to process a registered voter’s ballot.”

Hobbs said the list provided by DOJ contains “glaring deficiencies” and had no information about how it was collected or what sources were used.

The DOJ announced its list at a press conference Monday, led by Charles Neil Floyd, acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington and Pete Serrano, the first assistant U.S. Attorney for Eastern Washington. They said they had provided Hobbs’s office with a list — “the tip of the iceberg” — of people in Washington who were noncitizens and illegally registered to vote.

They asked Hobbs to review the list within 24 hours and for elections officials to not count the ballot of anyone on the list until their citizenship is verified.

DOJ’s announcement represents an escalation of tensions between Washington officials and the Justice Department, which has unsuccessfully sued for private voter information from the state, in an effort to pursue its theories about illegal voters.

Courts across the country have rejected the Trump administration’s lawsuits demanding such data from states, ruling the DOJ has no legal authority to get the information. Last month, a federal judge dealt the administration its 25th consecutive loss, dismissing a DOJ lawsuit against Hobbs.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed— while failing to offer evidence — that voter fraud from noncitizens is rampant.

Hobbs called the timing and nature of Floyd and Serrano’s announcement “profoundly disappointing.” Washington, he wrote, mailed ballots to voters nearly two weeks ago. And, Hobbs said, his office meets regularly with the Justice Department, but no mention of this was made.

“If you had valid concerns about voter registrations, the time to raise them was months ago,” Hobbs wrote. “Your decision to wait until the eve of an election and announce those concerns at a press conference instead of timely providing the list and any corroborating evidence to my office is not a sign of good faith to ensure a free, fair, and accurate election.”

A spokesperson for Floyd and Serrano said they had received the letter and “will take some time to review and decide next steps.”

Hobbs said his office did a “preliminary analysis” of the list which found a significant number of people who are not registered to vote at all and many people who are U.S. citizens.

“It is almost certain more people named on this list are also United States citizens,” Hobbs wrote. “Those already identified may just be the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of individuals that would be wrongfully disenfranchised by the actions you request.”

DOJ’s list also didn’t seem like it was designed to make it easy to review, Hobbs wrote. It was provided as a PDF, instead of an electronic spreadsheet, and it lacked the voter ID number and street address for each person.

“The absence of these fields makes it difficult — if not impossible — to confirm whether an entry on the list matches a voter registration,” Hobbs wrote. “And the list provided includes some duplicate entries, which indicates the list was created in a rushed manner.”

He also noted that in their letter Floyd and Serrano gave the wrong date for Election Day, incorrectly saying it is Nov. 2, rather than Nov. 3.

The DOJ made similar demands to California, where it sent a list of 20,000 voters whose ballots it said should be set aside. A federal appeals court on Monday rejected the administration’s request for an injunction to enforce the demand, sending the issue back to a lower court for consideration.

The Department of Homeland Security similarly said it had a list of nearly 16,000 people in Nevada who were noncitizens but registered to vote. But when it sent a list of 185 people to the state, Nevada officials responded that all of them were citizens and that DHS had provided “nothing of substance to suggest otherwise.”