Feds Probe Alleged Voter Fraud in California

On June 5, California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton announced an emergency election count accelerator plan.

Election workers conduct ballot tabulation at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center during California's state primary election in the City of Industry, Calif., on June 2, 2026. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

LOS ANGELES—Federal authorities announced on June 5 that they were investigating potential voter fraud in California as key races remained untallied days after the June 2 primary election, sparking questions about the state’s potentially weeks-long process for finalizing the results.

More than 3 million votes remained uncounted as of June 4, the latest update available, according to California Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, who has until July 10 to verify the election results.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli said on the morning of June 5 in a social media post that the state’s election system has “serious structural vulnerabilities,” including universal vote-by-mail without ID requirements, that create “conditions where fraud can go undetected and unpunished, eroding public confidence.”

Essayli did not comment on specific investigations but noted that his office has several underway in collaboration with the FBI’s Los Angeles office and intends to conduct a comprehensive audit of the state’s voter rolls with U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Human Rights Harmeet Dhillon.

“We will follow the evidence wherever it leads and prosecute any violations of federal election law to the fullest extent,” Essayli said.

Dhillon responded on X, writing, “Ask yourselves—why does California (& many other states) hide their voter rolls from the federal government at the same time they gladly hand them over to liberal activist groups?!”

Essayli’s announcement came after President Donald Trump posted about the delay on Truth Social on June 3, alleging that Democrats were to blame.

“There’s BIG cheating by the Democrats in California,“ Trump wrote. ”Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks.”

As an example of the kinds of voter fraud his office may pursue, Essayli noted a recent Department of Justice case in which a defendant agreed to a plea deal after admitting she paid homeless people in Los Angeles to register to vote in federal elections to support a paid signature-gathering business.

California’s Department of Justice and secretary of state did not immediately respond to inquiries from The Epoch Times.

“The state has stonewalled every effort to verify that only eligible U.S. citizens are registered to vote,” Essayli wrote, referencing an ongoing legal battle between the state and the federal government that has reached the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Also, on June 5, California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton announced an “emergency election count accelerator plan” that would temporarily assign available state employees from nonessential administrative positions to county election offices with significant backlogs in order to deliver a final vote count by 8 p.m. on June 11.

“I’m offering this to [Gov.] Gavin Newsom. I’m trying to be helpful to stop the humiliation, end the farce, get us the results,” Hilton said at a June 5 press conference, describing the state’s sluggish approach to counting ballots as “shameful.”

“India counts over 640 million votes in a day. California cannot count less than 10 million votes in a month. Thanks to the Democrats in charge of our state, we have become a national and international laughingstock.”

In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a representative for Newsom repeated a statement given to the media the day prior: “It is concerning that a candidate for Governor doesn’t know the Governor has nothing to do with counting ballots.”

The representative also stated that the governor also wished the vote count would move faster.

At his June 5 press conference, Hilton said, “If Governor Newsom is serious about restoring confidence in our elections, he should stop making excuses and deploy resources.”

Newsom signed a law on May 27 to “protect California elections from interference and intimidation,” namely from the Trump administration’s “unauthorized law enforcement activity.”

The law prohibits any individual from allowing federal law enforcement agents to access or seize voter rolls, other election data, or election technology without a court order and aims to shore up state control over responses to such requests.

In an update posted to her office’s website on June 5, Weber noted the state has 23 million registered voters—the largest number in the country—and that accurately counting and processing all valid votes by eligible voters “takes time.”