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An anonymous federal official has warned Congress that a rushed and insufficiently tested U.S. Postal Service system could prevent large numbers of Americans from receiving mail ballots this fall if courts allow President Donald Trump’s plans for the midterm elections to take effect.
The whistleblower disclosure, made public Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., alleges that the Postal Service has adopted an internal “zero-percent failure policy” under which an entire batch of ballots could be rejected if just one barcode sampled by a postal employee fails to scan or match voter information submitted through a new online portal.
A single batch could contain tens of thousands of ballots, according to the disclosure.
“The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans,” Blumenthal said during a call with reporters.
The Postal Service and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
How the system would work
Trump’s March executive order seeks to impose new restrictions on mail voting. A federal judge has blocked the plans, but the administration is seeking to reinstate them before the November election.
Under the proposed system, state and local election officials would upload voter lists to a Postal Service portal. Postal employees would then use the lists to determine whether ballots could be delivered.
The whistleblower alleges the portal was developed under constantly changing requirements, with as few as four working days available for customer testing before its planned launch.
Postal workers would reportedly scan a sample of ballots from large batches. If even one ballot failed verification, the entire batch could be rejected until the discrepancy was resolved.
For example, a single mismatch in a batch of 10,000 ballots could temporarily prevent the other 9,999 from being mailed, according to the disclosure.
“As designed, the process is entirely unforgiving,” the whistleblower wrote, warning that repeated verification cycles could delay ballots “by the thousands.”
Election officials raise concerns
The allegations add to concerns already expressed by state and local election officials about whether the system can handle the volume and constant changes involved in administering elections.
Voter registration databases are frequently updated as people register, move or change their information. Election officials have questioned whether the Postal Service portal will be able to process those updates quickly enough to prevent legitimate ballots from being flagged.
The Postal Service has said information submitted through the portal will be updated immediately and that postal employees will not determine voter eligibility or verify the accuracy of names and addresses. However, the Postal Service’s public rules do not disclose the sampling formula or the “zero-percent failure policy” described by the whistleblower.
Legal fight intensifies
The disclosure could provide additional ammunition for states and voting rights groups challenging Trump’s executive order and the Postal Service’s proposed rules.
The disclosure was submitted Sunday by Whistleblower Aid on behalf of an anonymous federal official who the organization said has direct knowledge of potentially serious problems with the system’s development. The official said they feared retaliation if identified.
Blumenthal, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, sent the disclosure Monday to Postmaster General David Steiner and requested documents about the system.
The legal battle has already produced conflicting rulings. The Supreme Court recently allowed implementation efforts to proceed temporarily, while a lower court subsequently blocked the administration’s plans. The lower court has since allowed the Postal Service to continue developing the portal for states that voluntarily choose to use it.
The timing is becoming increasingly urgent. North Carolina election officials are preparing to begin mailing ballots Friday, while other states will begin sending them in the coming weeks.
According to the whistleblower, the Postal Service paused development of the portal around June 25 after a federal court blocked implementation, then resumed work around July 29.
Postal officials had planned to launch the portal Tuesday, the disclosure said, although one of the whistleblower’s attorneys said Monday that he did not know whether that timeline remained in place.
