Staying informed is hard work. There’s a lot to keep up with. But the more information we have, the better equipped we are to make decisions and to help people around us feel better informed too. Trump’s executive order on mail voting is one of those issues that has kept us working overtime. I appreciate the hard work you’ve all been doing to stay up to speed. Today, things took an unexpected turn when a whistleblower surfaced with information about the election portal the USPS is building. Tonight, we shift gears and address that new development. If you find this sort of information and analysis helpful, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to the newsletter. Free subscribers are always welcome. And, if you’ve been reading Civil Discourse for a while and benefiting from it, I hope you’ll consider a paid subscription if you can. Paid subscriptions help support the time and work that goes into researching and writing the newsletter and making sure we have the information we need to make informed choices when it matters the most.
Most federal workers are covered by the Whistleblower Protection Act. Postal workers aren’t covered by the Act, but they are covered by parallel internal rules that protect them from retaliation if they report violations of law, rules, or regulations; gross mismanagement; gross waste of funds; abuse of authority; or a substantial danger to public health or safety. Those protections turn out to be very important. Today, an anonymous federal employee—it’s unclear what agency they work for—came forward with allegations that the Postal Service (USPS) is pushing forward to implement Trump’s executive order on mail voting in a manner that will throw Americans’ ability to cast a mail-in ballot into jeopardy in November. And all of this is happening as North Carolina prepares to begin mailing out ballots on Friday. Other states will follow.
You can read the full whistleblower disclosure here. In a cover letter transmitting it to Postmaster David Steiner, Senator Richard Blumenthal wrote, “The whistleblower’s allegations make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement the EO’s provisions in a way that safeguards every citizen’s right to vote in the upcoming midterm elections. Despite this, the Trump Administration appears intent on USPS moving forward with its flawed plans, no matter the chaos they may create.”
The most important revelations in the whistleblower complaint involve USPS’s creation of a Federal Ballot Mail Portal for uptake of state voting lists, including barcoded ballot envelopes.
The “Zero Fail” system is designed to fail: Senator Blumenthal said earlier today that “The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans.” That’s the case because as large batches of ballots are delivered to the Postal Service, if even one doesn’t match, say due to a name or address change, all of the ballots in that group will be returned to local election officials, and nothing moves forward until the mismatch is cleared.
Inadequate testing of the rushed system: The whistleblower says USPS is trying to build a system that should take a year or more of work in just three months, with continuously changing requirements for what the system should look like and some directions not put into writing. (When has the government ever failed to put every last detail into writing? If that’s not a red flag…) In some instances, USPS bosses gave the developers as few as four days for user testing. The whistleblower reported that “In just the week prior to September 1, 2026, the Whistleblower learned that IT workers have described the election ballot mail development process as ‘a shit show.’”
Possible violation of court order: It appears from the dates referenced in the complaint that the Postal Service, which initially stopped work on the portal after Judge Talwani entered her injunction, resumed work several days later. That comes as no surprise in an administration that has a history of failing to comply with court orders. Here, the administration is sure to brush the failure off as a technical matter and point to the fact that the Supreme Court lifted the stay. How this will turn out depends on the details and bears careful watching.
Senator Blumenthal has demanded that the USPS stop work on the Portal and that it provide an accounting to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. A Postal Service spokesperson said that the agency was “carefully reviewing the concerns" and that it “welcomes oversight and is committed to transparency.”
The bottom line is that like the Justice Department and other executive branch agencies, the Postal Service isn’t supposed to have a dog in the hunt when it comes to who wins (or loses) our elections. Their only job should be facilitating receipt and return of mail ballots. Trump’s effort to weaponize the Postal Service to influence the outcome of elections and disenfranchise American voters really says it all. And we should never focus so much on the details that we forget the context: No one works this hard to keep eligible citizens from voting unless they are truly, deeply frightened of what will happen if Americans are able to exercise their rights. We should never forget that. Our responsibility is to do whatever it takes to vote this year.
What’s Donald Trump’s endgame here? The situation is a win-win for him if we don’t stay on top of it, understand what he’s trying to do, and outsmart him. First off, Trump can try to keep people from voting by eliminating mail voting as a prospect for them. In the six states where most voting is done by mail, this could amount to game-changing voter suppression. And even where ballots are successfully mailed and collected, this is still creating chaos around the elections. Chaos can keep people from voting, especially if it becomes too difficult to figure out what the right thing to do is, or when misinformation and disinformation about voting is spread. And finally, this gives Trump a narrative. If the courts rule against him and the Republican Party fares poorly in November, he’ll claim it’s due to fraud because the courts blocked his plan. Even if he wins in court, he’ll claim that the delay in implementing his executive order meant he couldn’t do everything he wanted to, and use that to cast doubt on Democratic gains.
There’s no doubt he’ll use this situation every way we can. So what do we do?
First, if you plan to vote by mail, apply for your ballot as early as you can. And be aware of deadlines for both requesting and returning your mail-in ballot. You can find that for each state, along with information on how to track your ballot and make sure your vote gets counted, here.
Second, what do you do if you request a mail ballot and it never arrives? The rules vary by state. The Brennan Center explained it in the context of the 2020 election, where there were issues with receipt of mail ballots by voters. In states like Georgia, there was no problem. If you didn’t receive your ballot in the mail, you could go to your polling place and vote a regular ballot. But other states force people who applied for a mail ballot and didn’t receive it to vote a provisional ballot. Some states want you to bring your mail ballot with you if you asked for one but change your mind and vote in person. And then there’s a practical issue: If there’s a huge uptick in voting in person after asking for a mail ballot, will polling places have a sufficient quantity of provisional ballots on hand? This is the kind of chaos Donald Trump is driving. It means we have to be more disciplined about exercising our right to vote. But understanding that this is an issue is a big part of getting it right. Make sure you look up your state law and understand how it works. Look into whether county officials plan to have extra amounts of provisional ballots on hand if you’re in a state that will require them, and get together with friends now to ensure your local election officials understand the issue (most of them do!) and are getting prepared.
Third, be the civics education our states and counties need right now! Share this information with friends and neighbors and make sure they’re prepared too.
Fourth, and most importantly, do vote! Remember our North Star: no one would try this hard to take your vote away unless they were desperately afraid of the outcome of a free and fair election. Whatever else you do, make sure you vote. Let’s be the result that they’re afraid of. We’re the cavalry.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
Good for the gutsy (wo)man who came forward. I am not sure how serious this attempt will turn out to be. Sounds more like laying the ground-work for a far more formidable rigging in 2028 with the lessons-learned from this trial-run. In any case, we must push-back really hard and assume that this attack against republican governance is for real. We have little time to wait.
"The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded." – Baron de Montesquieu, ‘Spirit of Laws’; 1748.
“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.” – President and General Ulysses Grant, 1875.
Of course "...the Trump Administration appears intent on USPS moving forward with its flawed plans, no matter the chaos they may create." Because chaos is the objective.