The defendants are lawful permanent residents, who may live and work in the United States but are not eligible to vote in federal elections. Prosecutors allege that 22 cast ballots in at least one election, including the June primary; five registered but did not vote; and one submitted a provisional ballot in 2020. The allegations have not been proven in court.

The charges were announced Monday, Oct. 19, in an operation involving all four U.S. attorneys’ offices in California. Attorney General Rob Bonta said people who violated election laws should be held accountable if the allegations are established, but emphasized the small scale of the cases.

“Twenty-eight out of 23 million registered voters in California is just … a drop in the bucket numerically,” Bonta said, describing the figure as about 0.0001% of the state’s registered voters.

The investigation comes amid a broader Trump administration effort to scrutinize voter eligibility before the Nov. 3 election. The Justice Department says it has charged 113 people in 20 states in recent weeks with illegal voting or registration. The administration has also sought detailed voter records from states and sued 30 states and the District of Columbia over access to them.

In a separate legal dispute, the Justice Department sued California last week over a list of 20,000 people federal officials identified as potential noncitizens who may have received ballots. The federal government gave the state 48 hours to review the names, which were provided on a password-protected thumb drive. California officials say the administration has not supplied evidence to support its claims.

The department has asked a court to require California to set aside ballots associated with the people on the list until their citizenship is verified. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said the 20,000 names were only the start of the federal effort. Bill Essayli, a first assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, warned that election officials could face criminal consequences if they knowingly process ballots from people federal authorities have identified as noncitizens.

California sends mail ballots to all registered voters. Gov. Gavin Newsom has condemned the federal request, calling it an attempt to suppress voters shortly before Election Day. He said the state would continue administering elections while contesting the administration’s actions.

Recent court decisions have left parts of the dispute unresolved. The Supreme Court has allowed the Department of Homeland Security to continue operating its online voter-eligibility database, known as SAVE, but states are not required to use it. The court also blocked implementation of a separate administration-backed postal rule for screening mail-ballot recipients.

The federal investigation and ballot-list dispute place election administrators in a politically charged position: they must enforce eligibility rules while ensuring eligible voters’ ballots are counted. California officials say the current allegations do not demonstrate the broad pattern of fraud repeatedly asserted by President Donald Trump.