A federal whistleblower has accused the U.S. Postal Service of rushing out an untested ballot-verification system that could disrupt mail voting in November's midterms, adding fresh pressure to President Trump's contested overhaul of how absentee ballots are handled.
The disclosure, filed through the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid and released Monday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., alleges USPS leadership "discarded all best practices" in racing the technology toward a September 1 rollout tied to an executive order Trump signed in March directing the Postal Service to transmit mail ballots only to voters on a federally verified list.
The complaint singles out a "zero-percent failure policy" built into the system for checking that ballots meet the new requirements — a standard so unforgiving, the whistleblower says, that it could delay large numbers of ballots through repeated verification cycles. A companion online portal, through which state election officials are meant to submit voter names and ballot-envelope barcodes, is described as insufficiently tested. Separate reporting has detailed how a single mis-scanned barcode could void an entire batch of 10,000 ballots at once, underscoring how much is riding on one bad read.
"What the disclosure reveals is that the Postal Service has designed a system that is intended to fail."
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
Blumenthal urged Postmaster General David Steiner to "abandon this ill-conceived, unconscionable plan." USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment from NPR.
The order is already tied up in court
A federal judge in Boston has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the plan from taking effect, ruling that USPS likely lacks authority over how states administer mail-in voting. The Trump administration has appealed to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and both sides expect the fight to eventually reach the Supreme Court.
With the restraining order in place, no ballots are currently being processed through the disputed system, but election officials in several states say they are still drafting contingency plans in case courts allow it to proceed before November. Blumenthal's office said it expects to release additional material from the whistleblower complaint in the coming weeks.
