A whistleblower warned that the U.S. Postal Service has been moving ahead with a system for implementing Donald Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting that has been blocked by a federal judge.
“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the whistleblower’s attorneys summarized in a disclosure. “The whistleblower’s assessment and recitation of the facts around the risky and haphazard development of the project is a compelling warning of catastrophic failure which could derail the midterm elections.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) released the whistleblower report in a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, which was dated on Monday but publicly released on Tuesday.
“We urge you to abandon this ill-conceived, unconscionable plan and ensure that all Americans can exercise their constitutional right to vote, including by mail, without interference by USPS,” Blumenthal told Steiner, a former FedEx board member installed into the position at Trump’s urging.
The leader of the group Whistleblower Aid, which represents the anonymous federal employee behind the disclosure, likened the power grab to Julius Caesar’s infamous action before declaring dictatorship.
“We are crossing the Rubicon of American elections,” CEO Libby Liu said in a statement.
“This dangerously defective mail-in ballot process could disenfranchise millions of voters, ensnaring ballots in red tape under the guise of solving a non-existent problem,” Liu continued. “People in states that rely heavily on vote-by-mail will have a more difficult time making their voices heard in our challenged democracy this November.”
Despite a federal judge’s injunction blocking Trump’s executive order, the U.S. Postal Service has been moving ahead with creating a “Federal Ballot Mail Portal,” according to the report.
The whistleblower said that the process for creating the portal has been so “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed” that USPS officials have called it a “shit show.”
“As presently designed, if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state — effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters,” the disclosure states. “Even under ordinary circumstances this would be problematic because of predictable errors in any barcode scanning process.”
Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court lifted one of two injunctions blocking Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting on procedural grounds, but every judge to have reached the constitutional issue has found Trump trampled over the power of state and federal legislatures to determine voting procedures.
In late August, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani reaffirmed that principle in her most recent order.
“The record continues to lack any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting,” she wrote. “In any event, the USPS’s interest in correcting an unsubstantiated problem through likely unconstitutional means is dwarfed by the overwhelming risk of pervasive disenfranchisement of citizens who need access to mail ballots in order to vote.”
Talwani scheduled a hearing on Thursday at 9 a.m. Eastern Time in the cases brought by a coalition of state attorneys general led by California and advocacy groups led by the League of Women Voters.
The whistleblower accused the government of defying Talwani’s order in the latter case.
“Moreover, the whistleblower fears that work to develop the portal and related election ballot mail IT system systems violated the injunction and subsequent TRO while issued and active in League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump,” the disclosure states.
On Monday, the Trump Justice Department brushed aside the concerns about the executive order as “doomsday” predictions.
“The Postal Service will not determine voter eligibility, ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures,” the DOJ claimed in a new filing. “The rule does not displace a single state election law. And it need not and should not prevent a single voter from voting by mail.”
The whistleblower asked Congress to submit the allegations to the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General for “fear that OIG processes across the federal government have been rendered unsafe for employees to avail themselves of directly.”
Read the whistleblower’s disclosure in full here.
USPS has trouble delivering my regular mail on a consistent basis. Just imagine what a cluster this will be
If states control elections, cant the states prosecute the postal service for election interference?