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🇻🇪 Venezuela /Elections & Politics

Whistleblower warns of risks in Trump-backed new mail-voting system

From El Nacional · () Spanish

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

At a glance

News Unnamed sources In the courts
  • An unidentified USPS worker accused the federal mail-ballot system promoted by Donald Trump’s administration of being rushed, insufficiently tested and potentially defective.
  • The proposed portal would collect state voter lists and ballot barcodes, while USPS employees would verify mailed ballots before processing.
  • The initiative faces a legal dispute over federal authority because US elections are administered mainly by the states.

A USPS worker has warned that a new federal system for processing mail-in ballots could produce a “catastrophic failure” if it is launched without adequate testing. The worker described the project as “secret, rushed, chaotic and fundamentally flawed” in a complaint made public by Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal.

The complaint concerns an initiative promoted by Donald Trump’s administration weeks before the US midterm elections. The proposed system would create a federal online portal where state election authorities would upload lists of people who requested mail ballots, along with barcodes intended to identify the ballots.

Secret, rushed, chaotic and fundamentally flawed.

— Unidentified USPS workerThe whistleblower’s characterization of the federal mail-ballot system.

USPS employees would then check whether voters’ envelopes met the required parameters before processing them. The whistleblower’s main concern involves a so-called zero-percent-error policy. Under the procedure, an entire batch of ballots could reportedly be rejected if one barcode in a sample could not be scanned or did not match information stored in the federal system.

Catastrophic failure.

— Unidentified USPS workerThe worker’s warning about the possible consequences of insufficient testing.

“The apparent careless and rushed way in which the federal mail-ballot portal and supporting computer systems are being built poses a significant risk,” the worker said through the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid.

The system is being developed during a court fight over how far the federal government can intervene in mail voting. States hold primary responsibility for administering US elections, and there is no single national procedure for verifying this form of voting. Trump signed an executive order in March calling for tighter election controls, citing fraud concerns in some Democratic-led states, including California. A federal judge in Massachusetts temporarily blocked parts of the order, including barcode provisions and a requirement that states use verified voter lists. The Supreme Court later allowed part of the initiative to continue, but another federal judge subsequently blocked the presidential order again.

The apparent careless and rushed way in which the federal mail-ballot portal and supporting computer systems are being built poses a significant risk.

— Unidentified USPS workerThe worker criticized the development of the portal and its supporting systems.
About this summary

Originally published by El Nacional in Spanish. 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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