USPS whistleblower warns of risks to mail-in voting in the US
An anonymous whistleblower at the United States Postal Service (USPS) said that a new system for processing mail-in ballots could prevent millions of Americans from receiving them on time before the midterm elections in November. The system is being developed under President Donald Trump’s executive order to tighten oversight of mail-in voting.
As France 24 English reports, the whistleblower described the project as secretive, rushed, chaotic and fundamentally flawed. According to the whistleblower, the system was developed amid constantly changing requirements, while its testing amounted to only a fraction of what is standard for major IT projects.
How the portal is supposed to work
The proposed system would require state election authorities to upload lists of voters casting ballots by mail and identification barcodes to a federal portal. Postal workers would have to check a sample of ballots from large batches before accepting shipments for delivery.
According to the whistleblower, USPS allegedly introduced a zero-tolerance policy for errors: if even one barcode in the sample fails to scan or does not match federal system data, the entire batch may be rejected. Thus, a problem with one ballot in a batch of 10,000 could delay the shipment of the remaining 9,999 ballots until the discrepancy is resolved and a new check is conducted.
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USPS position and court ruling
USPS told AFP that it was reviewing the allegations but denied violating court orders. The Postal Service stressed that work on the portal is lawful, mandatory verification procedures are not currently being applied, and the portal will initially be offered to election authorities only on a voluntary basis.
Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, who released the whistleblower’s complaint, called on Postmaster General David Steiner to abandon the plan. He said USPS lacks the technical and operational capacity to implement the provisions of the order while guaranteeing every citizen’s right to vote.
Last week, a federal judge in Massachusetts temporarily blocked key parts of the Postal Service’s plan, preliminarily concluding that the agency likely lacks the authority to determine who may receive a mail-in ballot. The Trump administration is appealing the ruling. At the same time, the court allowed USPS to continue work on an online portal for states that voluntarily choose to use it.
The dispute is continuing as the first states prepare to mail out ballots for mail-in voting this week.
