LOS ANGELES—Federal authorities on Friday announced 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 three million votes remained uncounted as of Thursday, the latest update available, according to the California Secretary of State, which has until July 10 to verify the election results.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli said on Friday morning 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 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. Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks,” Trump wrote, signaling the U.S. Attorney’s Los Angeles office was investigating.

As an example of the kinds of voter fraud his office may pursue, Essayli noted a recent Department of Justice (DOJ) 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 Friday, 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 [Governor] Gavin Newsom. I’m trying to be helpful to stop the humiliation, end the farce, get us the results,” Hliton said at a Friday press conference, describing the state’s sluggish approach to counting ballots as “shameful.”

“India counts over 640 million votes in a day,” Hilton said. ‘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 laughing stock.”

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 added that the governor also wished the vote count would move faster.

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

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

SB 73 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 Friday, California Secretary of State Shirley N. 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.”