The U.S. Postal Service is on the verge of launching a hastily built, bug-ridden computer system that could jeopardize the mail-in voting process that one-third of all voters rely on, according to a complaint statement released Tuesday by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal. The effort is part of the implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail-in voting and has been temporarily halted by a federal judge. The ruling is being appealed by the administration and the directive could end up again before the US Supreme Court. The unnamed whistleblower’s disclosure contends that the Postal Service has been scrambling to try to build a complex system that would normally take a year or more in just three months, sometimes defying judge orders halting work. The goal is to have it ready for use in the midterm elections. The disclosure maintains that, because of new procedures, a single scanning error in a batch of tens of thousands of envelopes could prevent any from reaching voters. It details a system that election officials already warned could not be implemented before the first mail-in ballots begin being mailed Friday in North Carolina. “The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans,” Blumenthal told reporters before releasing the whistleblower information. “This administration seems hell-bent on changing the framework for casting votes in this country clearly for political reasons.” The executive order is subject to furious court action as the midterm elections approach. Trump’s executive order, signed in March, directed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to develop state citizenship lists and then required the Postal Service to mail ballots only to voters who are on that list. Election envelopes would have to comply with new Postal Service rules and include barcodes. The online portal that is the subject of the whistleblower’s complaint is intended for states to submit their lists of verified voters to the Postal Service. The White House said the software development process is “neither complex nor unique” for the Postal Service because it already uses bulk shipping and smart mail barcodes for large customers. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent and honest elections,” said spokesperson Lauren Bis. Trump has long opposed voting by mail, although he has repeatedly used this method to cast his own vote. He falsely blamed mail-in voting for his 2020 election loss and has spent years spreading conspiracy theories about it. A Brookings Institution report published in 2025 found that fraud in mail-in voting occurred in only about four cases of every 10 million mail-in votes cast. Sign up for the Ground Game newsletter: your guide to the biggest stories in American politics, policy and elections. Since returning to office, Trump has said Republicans should “take control” of the vote count in Democratic areas and launched a sweeping attempt to reinvestigate the 2020 election, despite a mountain of evidence that he lost fairly to Democrat Joe Biden. Until Trump came out against mail-in voting in 2020, both parties used the system equally. Since then, it has become more common among Democratic voters. More than 29% of all voters in 2024 cast their ballots by mail. After Trump issued his executive order, Democrats and civil rights groups sued and ultimately won a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani in Boston that barred implementation of the system before the November midterm elections. But without ruling on the legality of Trump’s order, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority last week deemed it premature and overturned Talwani, momentarily clearing the way for its implementation. On the evening of August 21, the Postal Service released a final rule outlining how it would implement the order. It said it would only send mail-in ballots to states that got approval for their envelope design and submitted a list of voters who would receive them through the not-yet-active online portal. That rule gave plaintiffs the opportunity to sue again, and Talwani late Thursday issued a 14-day restraining order against the measure’s implementation. The whistleblower’s complaint says that the development of the portal is rushed and sloppy. Blumenthal’s letter and an accompanying summary of the whistleblower’s statements say the Postal Service began working on the portal on June 15 and stopped it on June 25 after Talwani’s initial order. Then, on July 29, the Postal Service restarted work. That’s when the administration appealed the judge’s order to the Supreme Court. The high court did not quash Talwani’s court order until August 24. Last week, Talwani found that the Postal Service violated his order by continuing to work on the final rule, but did not impose sanctions on the government. On Monday, he issued a ruling refusing to lift the restraining order that also said the Postal Service could continue working on its portal as long as it did not force states to use it. In its summary of the whistleblower’s statement, the Whistleblower Aid group says the rushed construction of the portal, aiming to be live on Tuesday, meant it was not fully tested. “The seemingly sloppy and rushed manner in which the Federal Ballot Mail Portal and supporting computer systems are being built poses a significant risk,” the group wrote. “Millions of American voters may not receive their mail ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all.” The statement also says the Postal Service is implementing a “zero percent” rule in which any error on any mail-in ballot sent by an election office could lead to all of them being discarded, even if it is simply an issue among tens of thousands of legitimate ballots. The rule requires an election official to handle ballots at a physical post office. They will then be scanned to ensure they match the voter database. During three levels of checks, a single apparent error could cause the entire batch to be rejected, the statement said. Blumenthal said he has “very strong hope and some faith that our justice system will strike down this unconstitutional and unconscionable rule.” But, he added, if it somehow goes into effect for the midterm elections, he wouldn’t recommend voting by mail. ___Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this story.
