‘Untested’ system for voting by mail could ‘derail’ midterm, whistleblower claims
The U.S. Postal Service could “derail” midterm elections as it carries out the Trump administration’s plans to limit mail-in voting, according to a whistleblower complaint.
The anonymous whistleblower claims the U.S. Postal Service is ignoring a court ruling by continuing to work on implementing President Donald Trump’s executive order to tighten requirements for voting by mail ahead of the November elections.
Early voting for the midterms begins in some states this week.
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But the whistleblower reportedly told Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the postal service is moving forward with a “secretive, rushed” effort to implement “untested” technology to comply with Trump’s directive, which is still being challenged in court. The online portal is designed to allow state election officials to submit the names of approved absentee voters, along with barcodes from their ballot envelopes.
‘Catastrophic failure would be a feature rather than a bug’
The whistleblower claims that testing of the new system has been insufficient, according to a disclosure Blumenthal sent to the postmaster general on Monday. The disclosure was prepared by the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid, which is representing the anonymous federal government official who has knowledge of the new system’s development.
The whistleblower’s report claims that the “risky and haphazard” implementation of Trump’s order could lead to a “catastrophic failure” in the mail ballot system right before midterms.
“USPS leadership, it appears, has discarded all best practices as they speed the project to be ready for a September 1 implementation — raising questions about whether catastrophic failure would be a feature rather than a bug,” Blumenthal said in the disclosure.
The whistleblower said the USPS has a “zero-percent failure policy” for the process of verifying that the mail-in ballots meet the requirements of the Trump administration’s now-blocked rule.
“As designed, the process is entirely unforgiving,” the whistleblower said in the disclosure. “It could delay ballots by the thousands in repeated verification cycles — and thus prevent states from mailing enormous numbers of ballots.”
The Trump administration is appealing the rule blocking Trump’s order. If it’s allowed to move forward with the plan for the midterms, the whistleblower says problems with the online portal could prevent eligible absentee voters from receiving their mail-in ballots in time.
“The main takeaway for me is that the Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans,” Blumenthal told reporters. “One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail, and the USPS puts all of their votes at risk.”
Fear No Fact.
Nearly one in three Americans voted by mail in the most recent midterm elections, according to the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.
How the new portal would work
The USPS rule would require unique barcodes on the outbound and return envelopes for mail ballots. States would be required to submit the names and addresses of voters receiving mail ballots and their unique barcodes to the online “Federal Mail Ballot Portal.”
Under the postal service rule, voters would not be considered enrolled for their state’s “Mail-In and Absentee Participation List” until that information is submitted to the portal. The USPS says it “will not play any role in determining voter eligibility, maintaining voter rolls, or counting ballots.”
Many Democratic states argue that the Trump administration’s rules violate the Constitution, which they argue gives states the authority to set election rules, not the federal government.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that mail-in voting facilitates election fraud, but repeated investigations and studies have found no significant fraud in U.S. voting.