Whistleblower says USPS system Trump ordered for mail ballots is flawed and untested

An anonymous federal official warned in a whistleblower complaint this week that the technical system the U.S. Postal Service built for mail voting is flawed, untested and likely to cause major disruptions in this fall’s midterm elections if it is implemented.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March that directed his administration to create federal lists of citizens and asked the Postal Service to transmit mail ballots to only those people. A federal judge has blocked the order from going into effect amid ongoing litigation over its constitutionality; the whistleblower complaint highlights potential issues that could arise if the courts ultimately declare it lawful.

The USPS typically is responsible only for transporting mail ballots between election officials and voters, and the federal government has never kept a central list of all American citizens. Trump ordered the agency to take on an unprecedented and complex role in the process this year amid a broader attempt to exert greater control over the country’s elections and his continued unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud.

The technical system the USPS assembled to vet voters was developed in a “rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process,” according to a whistleblower complaint sent to the office of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Blumenthal sent the complaint to Postmaster General David Steiner on Monday, asking for more information.

“This administration seems hell-bent on changing the framework of casting ballots in this country, clearly for political reasons,” Blumenthal said on a call with reporters Monday. “It is unconstitutional, as is argued in the courts by the litigation that is ongoing, but this disclosure indicates that it is also blatantly incompetent and incapable of actually delivering ballots that are lawful in this midterm election.”

In a statement Tuesday, the White House disputed the whistleblower’s allegations.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail barcodes for a wide variety of large customers,” said Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson.

The whistleblower is identified as an anonymous federal official who is being represented by Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit group that represents public- and private-sector employees making such complaints. They allege that the USPS didn’t begin building its portal for verifying ballots “in earnest” until June, giving itself less than three months to complete a system that would ordinarily take at least nine to 12 months to build.