2026 Election: WA officials discuss earlier voter turnout, voter fraud crackdown

The midterm elections are just eight days away. Next Tuesday is your final chance to cast your vote. And today is the final day recommended to mail in your ballot, according to state election officers. And joining us now live is Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs. Steve, thank you so much for jumping on board with us again this morning. It's good to be here. Thank you. All right. Let's get into this. Today is the last day you recommend mailing in your ballot. Why is that? Well, that's because the United States Postal Service changed the way they process their postmark. So in the past, you know, we could guarantee that as long as you got your ballot before the carrier got there, it'd be postmarked. That no longer applies, and so sometimes it takes three, five, seven days to get a postmark. That's why we really encourage everyone to use a drop box. Yeah, that is important. I've seen a lot of people at drop boxes lately. Now, we've been covering early voting returns the last couple of days here at the station. 5.1 million ballots mailed out, more than 700,000 already turned in. That's about 15%. How do you interpret what you're seeing with those numbers? Well, actually, let's dive in a little bit more with these numbers. We're actually above, about a percent or so, above the number of ballots returned at this particular moment in time in 2022. So it sounds like either the turnout is going to be higher or people listening to our message about putting that ballot or returning the ballot early or both. Who knows? Here's another great number for you. Sixty eight percent of those ballots returned have been a drop box. So that is wonderful numbers for me because then I know those ballots are guaranteed to come into the county. All right, well, we like to see that. We like to see voting numbers up as well, whether you're voting, you know, red or blue. Now, federal prosecutors are making an announcement on illegal voting in our state later today. What do you expect to come from that announcement? Well, I really don't know. So we'll be watching very closely for that. I do also know that the DOJ is sending election observers to King County. we're waiting to hear the details on that, but that's what we're hearing at this particular moment in time. Yeah, I mean, there's been a lot of talk of illegal persons in the U.S. and in states voting. Has the U.S. Attorney's Office been in contact with you over what they call an issue of non-citizen voting in Washington? I know that's been a hot topic. Yeah, they've, you know, all over every state, they've made it a big issue, but the numbers just don't pan out. If we go back to 1982 to 2025, we've only had 15 instances of non-citizens voting, that's 0.00006%. But versus their USPS change, it's 20,000 people that are disenfranchised that didn't get their vote counted. Now, obviously, we're willing to work with our federal partners to help with easing fraud. But right now, they have been rather aggressive and adversarial. They have pulled back on support for our office in terms of cybersecurity and support from Homeland Security. And they have hyper concentrated on this particular issue that doesn't really get a lot bang for the buck. We'll see what they have to say. And in your opinion, why is the federal government doing this? Why are they cracking down on this right now when it hasn't really been an issue of you you say, over the last 20, 30 years? Well, I mean, there's different theories out there, right? So one theory is that, well, it's because that it looks like the Republicans may lose both the House and Senate. So this sets up a narrative to say, look, if we just would have had all these laws in place, if the executive orders were in place, if the SAVE Act would have been passed, this wouldn't have happened. But look, if you look out through history, parties in power who are in the White House usually don't do well in the midterms. But I want the voters to know out there, rest assured, Washingtonians know that in this state your vote, your election system is secure, accessible and transparent. If you have any questions, you should visit your county auditor, call us, let us know. Visit votewa.gov to track your ballot. All right, well, I know you've been pretty consistent on that stance. And we want to ask you, could the president ask for some ballots to be sequestered like you know we did see in California? And if so, what is that process like? What happens next? Well, I mean, the federal government, the president can say everything they want. But the bottom line is we have a constitutional right to run elections the way we see fit. The DOJ has tried to sue on behalf of the president on various issues, especially on our voter data list. They have lost every single time. In fact, there's 27 dismissals that the DOJ has received, not a single win for the Department of Justice. And we've won all of our court cases, thanks to Nick Brown working with us, our Attorney General. We've won all of our cases against the federal government. Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, it's certainly been an interesting election season. And I'm sure we'll be talking to you again here in the coming week as everything gets rolling even further. Thank you so much for joining and jumping on today. Well, thank you very much. Don't forget, put your ballot in the drop box. All right. You heard it there from the Washington State Secretary, Steve Hobbs. We'll be right back with more news, traffic, and weather. We'll leave you with a shot of our state capitol.