Whistleblower says USPS defied court to push ‘untested’ portal for Trump mail voting order

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service is rushing to implement President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots — despite a court order barring it from doing so — using “an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” that could cause “catastrophic problems” in the November election, according to an agency whistleblower.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the unidentified whistleblower alleged in a statement published Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Among other issues, the whistleblower alleged that the Postal Service’s new Federal Ballot Mail Portal for verifying mail ballots — which Trump demanded in a March executive order and California and other states are challenging in court — has been built in a “slapdash” manner and is “fundamentally flawed.” Thousands of ballots would be invalidated whenever a single ballot’s newly designed Postal Service barcode isn’t properly read, the whistleblower said.

“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,” read the whistleblower’s statement, which the group Whistleblower Aid helped draft.

The Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment, but Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, downplayed the concerns.

“The process of building software to carry out this new verification check is neither complex nor unique for USPS since the Postal Service regularly uses bulk mailing and intelligent mail bar codes for a wide variety of large customers,” Bis said. “Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, whose office has been leading the state challenge to the Postal Service changes in court, said his office has been “arguing in court that USPS cannot credibly implement the drastic, unprecedented, and unlawful changes at issue in time for the November midterm elections.”

The whistleblower’s statement, he added, “only strengthens that position and underscores the importance of our litigation and other legal challenges to the Trump Administration’s actions.”

Other California leaders expressed outrage and demanded the Postal Service plans be abandoned.

“This new secret tracking system at the U.S. Postal Service is faulty, untested, and threatens to totally disrupt ballot delivery for millions of American citizens,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, who said his committee had also received the whistleblower’s statement.

“Defying court orders to engage in election interference should bring prison time. Lock them up. Defend democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.

“Our elections are safe and secure. They WORK,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on the same platform. “Trump is trying to sow chaos for mail voting in the midterm elections because prices are up, his policies are unpopular, and he knows the American people are going to be heard loud and clear on Election Day.”

California law requires all registered voters be sent a ballot in the mail, and more than 80% of California voters have used those ballots to vote in recent elections. A majority of state voters in a recent poll identified potential interference in the election by the Trump administration as a “major concern.”

Trump — who votes by mail himself — has contended without evidence that the changes are necessary to combat widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Independent elections experts say there is no evidence that such fraud exists in large numbers.

Trump’s executive order called on the Postal Service to change its rules to require each state to submit a list of eligible voters to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes allowing the Postal Service to identify and reject any that don’t match the lists.

The order also called on the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own lists of eligible citizen voters by state, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists. The Postal Service’s final rule adopting the changes did not claim authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists, but said the lists would put federal law enforcement in “a better position to identify any potential issues” with ballots.

Multiple lower court orders in recent months have barred the Postal Service from implementing the changes, though the whistleblower alleged those orders were ignored.

Some of those orders were lifted after the Supreme Court last month found that federal agencies could continue to prepare for the changes prior to implementing them. However, after the Postal Service issued its “final rule” for implementing the changes on Aug. 21, California and other litigants sued again last week — winning another temporary restraining order barring the work.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote that the court did not have “any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” before it, and that the Postal Service’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, who also issued some of the previous orders blocking the changes, has repeatedly expressed concern about the short timeline until the Nov. 3 elections and the Postal Service’s ability to implement the changes in time.

The whistleblower’s statement bolsters such concerns.

The whistleblower described “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 effort, the whistleblower wrote, “deviates dangerously from even the most basic software development best practices.”

The whistleblower noted “significant concern, among those whose job it is to build this software, that the project violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software” before a Tuesday deadline for making the system ready for use by the states, and that “multiple USPS officials” have referred to the development process as a “s— show.”

The whistleblower also said that Postal Service leaders ordered employees to resume work on the system about a month ago, while it was barred by the court.

In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner, Blumenthal said the whistleblower’s allegations “make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement” Trump’s desired changes, and should abandon the effort.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said he is not surprised that a nationwide voting system developed in a matter of weeks is “not ready for prime time.”

“This is what happens when you take people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you instruct them to rush to finish a federal IT project without any of the guardrails around what any of this is supposed to look like,” he said.

He also said if the Postal Service continued to build the portal after a court ordered it to stop, that would be a major problem. “When a court says pencils down, that’s supposed to mean pencils down.”

However, Levitt said said he does not think the courts — including the Supreme Court — will actually allow the changes to take effect for November, if ever.

“I don’t see five justices wanting to unleash this level of chaos in the coming elections,” he said.