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Portal Under Fire
A whistleblower warned that the U.S. Postal Service’s new system for handling mail ballots has “potentially catastrophic problems,” saying USPS is continuing work on implementing a Trump executive order to tighten mail voting rules before the November midterm elections.
“potentially catastrophic problems”
The disclosure was provided to Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and made public Tuesday, with Blumenthal now questioning Postmaster General David Steiner about USPS’s development of a new online portal to house information about voters and their mail ballots.
Blumenthal said, “The main takeaway for me is that the Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans,” and he added that “One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail, and the USPS puts all of their votes at risk.”
The Postal Service published a final rule last month laying out new requirements for mail voting, including the addition of a unique barcode and an online “Federal Ballot Mail Portal” for state election officials to submit names, addresses, and barcodes.
The whistleblower’s lawyers said the new portal is “untested” and will have “significant operating problems” when released, warning that the verification process could keep large numbers of mail ballots from being delivered to voters.
Courts, Timelines, Testing
Blumenthal’s letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, described by MS NOW, says the whistleblower alleges USPS’s process is “rushed” and “risky and haphazard,” with the Federal Ballot Mail Portal on an “impossible” timeline to finish before the midterm elections.
MS NOW reported that a federal judge in Massachusetts temporarily paused the implementation of the USPS provision in Trump’s executive order, and on Monday clarified that USPS was allowed to continue developing the system while implementation remains paused.
NPR reported that the whistleblower warned the USPS plan could “derail” the midterm election if it continues rushing out “untested” technology, and it quoted the disclosure’s claim that USPS leadership “discarded all best practices.”
The NPR disclosure also described a “zero-percent failure policy,” saying the process is “entirely unforgiving” and could delay ballots “by the thousands in repeated verification cycles.”
NPR added that Blumenthal urged Steiner to “abandon this ill-conceived, unconscionable plan” and said on a phone call that the disclosure reveals “the Postal Service has designed a system that is intended to fail.”
Political Stakes and Fallout
The dispute is tied to Trump’s March executive order directing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to develop state citizenship lists and requiring the Postal Service to send mail ballots only to voters on such a list.
“rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process”
NBC News reported that the whistleblower complaint says the technical system the USPS built for mail voting is flawed, untested, and likely to cause major disruptions in the midterm elections, and it quoted the complaint describing a “rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process.”
In response, the White House disputed the allegations, with Lauren Bis saying the process of building software for the new verification check is “neither complex nor unique” because USPS regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail barcodes.
NBC News also reported that Blumenthal told reporters, “This administration seems hell-bent on changing the framework of casting ballots in this country, clearly for political reasons,” and he argued it is “unconstitutional” in ongoing court litigation.
The complaint’s design warning, as quoted by NBC News, says that “if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan,” the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state, effectively stopping ballots from being mailed to voters.