Daniel Wolfram
The new system and rules are being rolled out with just over two months until the midterm election.
America has had some kind of mail-in or absentee voting since the Civil War.
Since 1995, studies have shown that voting by mail in the United States does not favor one political party over another. That has not stopped Donald Trump from trying to abolish mail-in voting for this upcoming election.
Now, a worker in the Postal Service has blown the whistle and sounded the alarm regarding how mail-in voting is being processed by the administration.
The postman is the whistleblower
An employee of the United States Postal Service (USPS) has stepped forward to sound the alarm about how Trump’s new mail-in ballot system is going to create chaos. According to documents released by Senator Richard Blumenthal, the Trump administration will soon hold unprecedented power over mail-in voting.
The government plans to let the USPS block entire batches of ballots if a single name on a state list contains an error. That means one single typo could stop thousands of legitimate voters from receiving their mail.
“USPS will, for the first time, play a gatekeeping function and be in a position to refuse to mail ballots that state election officials have determined should be sent out,” the letter states.
No margin for error
Under these rules, a single mistake triggers a shutdown. A new software system makes sure of that. “When ballots are submitted to USPS in large-volume batches, if any one ballot in the batch cannot be verified against the Portal, all ballots in that batch will be rejected.”
“Not only is this system astonishingly untested, USPS has simultaneously implemented an impracticable zero percent failure rate,” the whistleblower warns.
Local election officials would then have to retrieve and fix the full batch of documents. There is also no clear process for voters to challenge a rejected ballot.
While Trump has claimed that “mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” nearly twenty percent of registered Republicans also vote by mail. Trump did also vote by mail in a special election in Florida this year.
Trump administration defends decision
The administration insists the new ballot roll-out will run smoothly. White House Spokesperson Lauren Bis defended the process.
“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 barcodes for a wide variety of large customers. Under President Trump, the federal government is working to ensure safe, transparent, and honest elections.”
However, the White House did not explain how rejected voters will be notified, leaving election experts deeply concerned as the election nears. It seems as though the administration does not know either.
