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Whistleblower says Postal Service rushed and mishandled Trump mail-voting order
🇺🇸 United States /Elections & Politics

Whistleblower says Postal Service rushed and mishandled Trump mail-voting order

From PBS NewsHour · () English

Translated from English and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Unnamed sources In the courts
  • An unidentified whistleblower accused the U.S. Postal Service of rushing a system required under President Donald Trump’s order limiting mail voting.
  • The disclosure said a scanning error could stop large batches of ballot envelopes from reaching voters, while the order remains tied up in federal court.
  • Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal called the effort disenfranchising, while the White House described the mail-voting provisions as measures to combat fraud.

The U.S. Postal Service is preparing a computer system in three months that an unidentified whistleblower says would normally take at least a year, and the disclosure warns that errors could disrupt mail voting in the midterm elections.

The system forms part of President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail ballots to voters included on state citizenship lists. It would also require ballot envelopes to follow new Postal Service rules and carry bar codes. A federal judge temporarily halted the implementation, but the administration has appealed, and the dispute could return to the Supreme Court.

The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans.

— Richard BlumenthalThe Democratic senator criticized the proposed system while releasing the whistleblower disclosure.

The whistleblower statement, released by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, describes an effort that has proceeded amid legal uncertainty. It says a single scanning error in a batch containing tens of thousands of ballot envelopes could prevent the entire batch from reaching voters. Election officials have already warned that the system could not be ready before North Carolina sends out its first mail ballots on Friday.

This administration seems hell-bent on changing the framework on casting ballots in this country clearly for political reasons.

— Richard BlumenthalBlumenthal accused the administration of pursuing politically motivated changes to voting procedures.

Blumenthal said, "The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans," and accused the administration of changing the country’s voting framework for political reasons. The White House has called the order’s mail-voting provisions "commonsense measures" intended to fight fraud. Trump has repeatedly opposed voting by mail, although he has used it himself, and has falsely blamed it for his 2020 election defeat.

The Postal Service did not comment Monday night, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. A 2025 Brookings Institution report cited in the account found that fraud in mail voting occurred in only about four cases, though the provided text ends before giving further detail.

commonsense measures

— White HouseThe White House used this phrase to describe the mail-voting provisions in Trump’s executive order.
About this summary

Originally published by PBS NewsHour in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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