The U.S. Justice Department has given California 48 hours to review a list of people suspected of receiving mail-in ballots despite potentially not being U.S. citizens.

In an October 13 letter, Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter requested that officials verify each person’s citizenship and temporarily set aside ballots when eligibility cannot be confirmed, rather than canceling them.

The request follows the Trump administration’s broader efforts to examine state voter registration lists, including lawsuits seeking access to unredacted voter records.

The Justice Department has lost 26 of 31 lawsuits filed against states seeking voter registration data, while officials have increasingly relied on public records and other investigative methods to identify potential noncitizen registrations, CBS News has reported.

Election experts say voter fraud is rare, while a recent Reuters analysis found that administrative errors may have added more than 30,000 self-declared noncitizens to voter rolls since 2000, a small number compared with the nation’s approximately 174 million registered voters in 2024.