Whistleblower Exposes Trump’s USPS Ballot Changes as ‘S*** Show’ Threatening Voter Rights

POLICY WIRE — Washington, D.C. — An anonymous federal official has alerted Congress about Donald Trump’s “secretive, rushed” and “chaotic” directives for the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to introduce new mail-in ballot rules, which could disenfranchise millions of voters this fall.

The whistleblower’s report, released on Tuesday, highlights “potentially catastrophic problems” with the administration’s new system, including a “zero-percent failure policy” that could reject tens of thousands of ballots if any errors are detected, such as misread barcodes or postal worker mistakes.

Postal officials and IT specialists have described the situation as a “mess” and a “s*** show” that illegally defied court orders against implementing the new ballot-tracking system before crucial midterm elections.

Libby Liu, CEO of WhistleblowerAid.org, which is representing the anonymous official, stated, We are crossing the Rubicon of American elections. This dangerously defective mail-in ballot process could disenfranchise millions of voters, ensnaring ballots in red tape under the guise of solving a non-existent problem.

Federal courts have repeatedly blocked the USPS from implementing Trump’s executive order on mail-in ballots, which called for the creation of a national voter registration list to determine ballot eligibility.

On August 21, the USPS published new certification requirements, which could not take effect until federal courts lifted an injunction. The Supreme Court allowed Trump’s executive order to stand temporarily, but District Judge Indira Talwani issued a temporary restraining order three days later, blocking the changes.

Despite the restraining order, the administration continues to fight the case in court to overhaul mail-in voting rules just weeks before Election Day. Election officials across the country have warned that a last-minute scramble to upload voter lists into an online portal designed by USPS would amount to an unconstitutional attack on election administration, introducing potentially catastrophic errors.

If the plans are allowed to proceed, USPS workers would be required to scan barcodes on a sample of envelopes to ensure voters appear on the state’s list. Even a single mismatch could result in the rejection of thousands of ballots at a time, according to the whistleblower report.

The report states, As designed, the process is entirely unforgiving. It could delay ballots by the thousands in repeated verification cycles — and thus prevent states from mailing enormous numbers of ballots.

States are constantly updating their voter rolls, meaning the lists sent to USPS could quickly become outdated. USPS and the Department of Justice have defended the program, but election officials fear the government’s list could be dangerously slow to reflect state changes.

Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, whose office received the whistleblower report, said, Their system is set up to fail — and risk the right to vote for millions of Americans who cast their ballots by mail. Given this new information, such sloppiness and haste seems clearly part of a purposeful attempt to create chaos and prevent people from voting. I am demanding answers and accountability.

Voting rights groups fear Trump’s efforts to centralize control over election administration, which is constitutionally left to the states, is an attempt to boost Republican candidates and suppress Democratic turnout during an election that will likely determine the balance of power in Congress and the fate of Trump’s remaining years in office.

Trump has long insisted, without evidence, that voting by mail is ripe for fraud and that manipulated ballots were “rigged” against him in elections he lost. He has called for changes to mail-in voting rules while simultaneously demanding Senate passage of his SAVE America Act, which would severely restrict mail-in voting and impose nationwide voter ID rules.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has expressed doubts about sacrificing the filibuster to pass Trump’s bill. Trump has argued for its passage in increasingly desperate terms, even suggesting the possibility of a national emergency to implement the rules.

David Kligerman, senior vice president and special counsel at WhistleblowerAid.org, representing the whistleblower, said, The crown jewel of American democracy, our historic record of free and fair elections, deserves so much better than this slipshod effort.

States are preparing for midterm elections, with impending deadlines for voters to receive ballots that can be filled out and returned in time to count by November. The “slapdash rollout” of Trump’s new system “could prove a major threat to voting rights in upcoming midterm elections,” Kligerman warned.

Reporting by Policy-Wire (PW)