Whistleblower Exposes Postal Service’s Hasty, Flawed System Threatening Mail Voting

POLICY WIRE — Washington, D.C. — The U.S. Postal Service is on the brink of deploying a hastily constructed, error-laden computer system that threatens the integrity of mail voting, according to a whistleblower’s allegations unveiled by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

This system, part of President Donald Trump’s executive order to restrict mail voting, has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge. The administration is appealing this decision, potentially leading the matter back to the Supreme Court.

The whistleblower claims the Postal Service has been frantically developing a system that typically requires over a year in just three months, often disregarding the judge’s orders to halt work. The aim is to have it operational for the midterm elections.

The whistleblower’s disclosure warns that a single scanning error in a batch of ballot envelopes could prevent any from reaching voters, detailing a system that election officials have cautioned cannot be implemented before mail ballots start being sent out in North Carolina.

Sen. Blumenthal accused the Postal Service of designing a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans, suggesting the administration’s actions are politically motivated.

Trump’s executive order, issued in March, mandated the creation of state citizenship lists by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration, requiring the Postal Service to send mail ballots only to voters on these lists. Ballot envelopes must comply with new Postal Service rules and include bar codes.

The online portal at the center of the whistleblower’s complaint is meant for states to submit their lists of verified voters to the Postal Service.

Neither the Postal Service nor the White House has commented on the allegations. The White House has defended the mail voting provisions as “commonsense measures” to combat fraud.

Trump has long opposed mail voting, despite using it himself. He falsely attributed his 2020 election loss to mail voting and has propagated conspiracy theories about it. A 2025 Brookings Institution report found mail voting fraud occurs in about four cases per 10 million mail ballots cast.

Since his return to office, Trump has urged Republicans to take over vote counting in Democratic areas and has attempted to reinvestigate the 2020 election, despite evidence of his fair loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Mail voting was once used equally by both parties but has become more prevalent among Democratic voters since Trump’s opposition in 2020. Over 29% of all voters in 2024 cast their ballots by mail.

After Trump’s executive order, Democrats and civil rights groups sued, winning a ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani in Boston to bar the system’s implementation before the November midterms. However, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority recently overruled Talwani, temporarily allowing the system’s implementation.

On Aug. 21, the Postal Service released a final rule on how it would implement the order, specifying it would only send mail ballots for states that received approval for their envelope design and submitted a voter list through the inactive online portal. This prompted another lawsuit, leading Talwani to issue a 14-day restraining order against the measure’s implementation.

Blumenthal’s letter and the whistleblower’s summary state the Postal Service began working on the portal on June 15, stopping on June 25 after Talwani’s initial order. Work resumed on July 29 when the administration appealed the judge’s order to the Supreme Court, which did not overturn Talwani’s injunction until Aug. 24.

Last week, Talwani found the Postal Service violated her order by continuing to work on the final rule but imposed no sanctions. On Monday, she refused to lift the restraining order, allowing the Postal Service to continue working on its portal as long as it did not force states to use it.

Whistleblower Aid’s summary of the whistleblower’s statement highlights the portal’s rushed construction, lacking full testing, and warns of significant risks, including millions of American voters potentially not receiving their mail-in ballots in a timely manner or at all.

The statement also reveals the Postal Service’s “zero percent” rule, where any errors in mail ballots sent out by an election office could result in all of them being discarded, even if only one error is found among tens of thousands of legitimate ballots.

Blumenthal expressed hope that the justice system would strike down the unconstitutional and unconscionable rule but warned against voting by mail if it goes into effect for the midterms.

Reporting by Policy-Wire (PW)