UPDATE: We have changed the headline on this based on a bunch of goddamn whiners on Bluesky picking nits about “the ballots aren’t invalidated, this is stopping them from being MAILED,” like it is a big huge difference of some kind, whatever.
An anonymous federal official warns in a formal whistleblower complaint that Donald Trump's executive order to restrict voting by mail is likely to result in a “foreseeable catastrophic disruption” to November’s midterm elections, because the USPS has attempted to slap together complex new computer systems on a rushed timeline, without adequate planning or testing. Also known as “yeah, that’s the point.”
The whistleblower’s statement, released Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), says the system is designed to fail, because if barcode scanners fail to read just one ballot envelope in a batch of tens of thousands, the entire batch would be rejected and sent back to the state to fix. (And then there might be another fuckup.)
The whistleblower says that where similarly complex IT projects for handling mail or packages normally take a year or more to develop, with multiple rounds of testing to make sure its parts work together, the Postal Service has attempted to cobble together its election mail system in just 90 days so it can be online in time for the fall elections, whether it works or not. The point? Yeah! That’s it!
The development process for the new election ballot IT systems has been so haphazard and rushed that in the days before its planned rollout, “multiple USPS officials” have called it “a shit show,” according to the whistleblower complaint.
In slightly more measured language, the disclosure explains,
USPS leadership, it appears, has discarded all best practices as they speed the project to be ready for a September 1 implementation - raising questions about whether catastrophic failure would be a feature rather than a bug.
Thanks to a judge’s order, the buggy system won’t actually come online today, so woohoo, democracy saved for the moment, again.
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Back in March, Trump issued an executive order directing the US Postal Service to only mail out ballots to people on lists of voters that states would be required to compile, making absolutely sure that everyone on the lists is a US citizen. This was supposedly to prevent “fraud,” although voting by noncitizens has always been vanishingly rare. A federal judge in Massachusetts has issued orders in two separate cases blocking the administration and the Postal Service from implementing the scheme. The administration has appealed both cases to the Supreme Court in hopes that Trump’s buds there will let him rig the election with all deliberate haste.
Eight states currently run almost all their elections by mail, and have done so for years without any significant problems. They’re mostly blue, though deep-red Utah also uses vote-by mail and manages to elect rightwing loons without any problems. All the other states allow voters to request absentee ballots, most without having to provide an excuse. The AP has a friendly interactive map of state vote-by-mail laws here.
Today’s release of the whistleblower complaint makes clear that if the Court is stupid enough to let Trump’s plan go into effect, the Postal Service’s new IT systems won’t be up to the job. USPS is in the business of delivering mail, not deciding who’s eligible to vote, and up until now, it’s done a pretty good job of getting ballots to the voters, then delivering the votes back to county elections officials for counting. Until now, election mail has been handled pretty much like any other bulk mail, and the technology was about properly getting the mail delivered, and charging the states the correct postage.
In late August, USPS issued new rules to get in the way of that fairly simple process: It won’t deliver mail ballots until states get approval for the envelopes and submit new lists of eligible voters, using a “portal” designed to handle all that information from the states.
Have we mentioned that the Constitution reserves the running of elections to the states? Ah, a mere bagatelle.
With only 90 days to put together an all-new system to handle the task, the Postal Service bodged together a system without bothering with “best practices” of normal software or product development. Instead, it did things the Trump Way: like frat boys finishing a months-long assignment during an all-nighter before the due date.
Per the disclosure letter, submitted to Blumenthal by the nonprofit group Whistleblower Aid:
The Whistleblower paints a dire picture of a slapdash software development process as the USPS attempted to create this complex IT system, with multiple points of ballot review, in a matter of weeks. The very manner in which the project is being developed deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.
Individual parts of the system were “siloed” from each other during development, with little testing of how they’d work together, and the final version was only thrown together during the week of August 24, 2026, the complaint says.
Oh yes, and when Judge Talwani ordered the Postal Service to stop working on the portal system on June 25, USPS complied, but then started working on it again on July 29, the day the administration appealed the case to the Supreme Court. The Court didn’t actually overturn Talwani’s order until August 24.
As the AP reports, “Talwani last week found the Postal Service violated her order by continuing to work on the final rule, but she imposed no sanctions on the government,” which we think is entirely too nice of her. Monday, Talwani also ruled that the restraining order against implementing the portal remains in place, but she also said USPS can keep working on it, as long as it doesn’t require states to use the thing. We are not a lawyer, but we guess that means red states can “voluntarily” submit whatever raggedy-ass voter lists they want ahead of the election and then wait to be sued if voters in blue cities never get their absentee ballots.
Voting by mail starts in a couple weeks in some states. Good luck; maybe the courts will stop this fuckery. If you’re able to vote in person, we’d recommend you do so.
[Whistleblower Statement (p. 7 of pdf) / AP / WaPo (gift link)]
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People who have not built computer-based systems have no idea how long it can take to get it right. Even for apparently "simple" systems. For a project as important as vote-by-mail, and which is supposed to be fail-proof, a year is already a pretty tight schedule. 90 days is GUARANTEED failure. As the Dok has pointed out, that probably is the intended result.
Biden should have sacked the Postmaster General. trump has sacked anyone he wants, regardless of their term. Now this.