'Secretive, rushed, chaotic': Whistleblower flags risks in Trump's USPS ballot plan

A whistleblower has warned that a new US Postal Service (USPS) system being developed to implement president Donald Trump's mail voting order could disrupt ballot deliveries to millions of Americans, raising fresh concerns over the timing and reliability of the system ahead of the November midterm elections.The disclosure, released on Tuesday by Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal, alleges that USPS has been developing the federal ballot mail portal at speed and with limited testing, despite an ongoing legal battle over Trump's executive order.The anonymous federal official, represented by the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid, described the project as "secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed" and warned of a "catastrophic failure"."The apparently sloppy and rushed manner in which the federal ballot mail portal and supporting IT systems are being built poses significant risk," the whistleblower said, according to news agency AFP."Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all," the official added.Under the proposed system, states would upload lists of voters receiving mail ballots along with identifying barcodes to a new federal portal. Postal workers would then check samples from ballot batches against the information before accepting them for delivery.The whistleblower alleges that USPS has adopted a "zero-percent failure policy", under which an entire batch could be rejected if a sampled barcode fails to scan or does not match the federal system.That could mean a single error in a batch of thousands of ballots delaying delivery of the rest until the discrepancy is resolved and the batch is checked again.Blumenthal, the senior Democrat on a Senate investigations panel, accused the Postal Service of risking voters' access to the ballot and called on Postmaster General David Steiner to abandon the plan."The whistleblower's allegations make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement the (order's) provisions in a way that safeguards every citizen's right to vote in the upcoming midterm elections," Blumenthal said."The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans," he later told reporters, according to the Associated Press, adding, "This administration seems hell-bent on changing the framework on casting ballots in this country clearly for political reasons.”The White House has described the mail voting provisions as "commonsense measures" aimed at combating fraud.Trump's March executive order seeks tighter controls on mail voting, including new requirements involving voter verification and ballot envelopes.The policy has faced repeated court challenges. A federal judge in Massachusetts has temporarily blocked key parts of its implementation, while allowing USPS to continue developing the portal for states that voluntarily choose to use it. The administration has appealed.Catch the latest World News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.