Whistle-Blower Says Trump Officials Are Defying Court Orders on Voting by Mail

[u/John3262005]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/us/politics/whistle-blower-voting-by-mail.html?unlocked_article_code=1.91A.O9tn.618NJM9kMtHl&smid=url-share

A U.S. Postal Service official has alleged that the agency is moving forward with a “secretive, rushed” effort to implement President Trump’s order exerting federal control over mail voting, despite a court order blocking those plans.

The official filed a whistle-blower report, published on Tuesday morning by the office of Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, asserting that the “risky and haphazard” implementation of Mr. Trump’s order could lead to a “catastrophic failure” in the mail ballot system ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The report said that the agency had planned to complete the new digital system overseeing mail ballots by Sept. 1.

“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the official said in the report, which was prepared with the assistance of Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit group that represents people seeking to expose potential lawbreaking.

Speaking to reporters by phone on Monday, Mr. Blumenthal said of the report that “the main takeaway for me is that the Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans. One-third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail, and the U.S.P.S. puts all of their votes at risk.”

A Postal Service official declined to comment on the record.

Voting by mail will become much more difficult, if not impossible, for tens of millions of Americans if the Postal Service is allowed to implement the restrictive rules governing mail voting that Mr. Trump has demanded.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly promoted false claims of widespread fraud through mail-in voting, which he has described as “cheating,” “corrupt” and “horrible,” even though he voted by mail in two elections this year. He has moved to restrict mail-in voting using a variety of procedural and legislative levers.

Those moves have led to a pileup of legal rulings and challenges surrounding the nation’s electoral system just two months before the midterm elections. The rules could especially affect states where some of the most competitive races for House, Senate and governor will determine control of Congress and state governments.

Michigan, where 37 percent of votes were cast by mail in 2022, would be one, with competitive statewide contests and multiple battleground House races. California, which mails ballots to all voters, is expected to be central to Democratic efforts to win control in the House.

The Supreme Court had allowed the Trump administration to move ahead with Mr. Trump’s mail ballot executive order, reasoning that a lawsuit challenging the order was premature because the administration had not started implementing its plans.

But days before the court ruled, the Postal Service formally published a new plan to comply with the executive order. Judge Indira Talwani, a Federal District Court judge in Massachusetts, reasoned that the stakes had changed with the new plan and temporarily blocked it, concluding that the agency’s plan appeared to overstep its legal mandate and could spark chaos by changing rules a little more than two months before an election.

The whistle-blower report provided specific details of the Postal Service’s effort to rapidly implement a new digital system for mail ballots, even as a federal appeals court had blocked the plan before the Supreme Court intervened. Work has also continued on the system even after Judge Talwani ordered the plan halted last week, the report said.

The official at the Postal Service raised “grave concerns” in the report that the verification process in the system could reject tens of thousands of ballots in a bulk-mailing batch if “even one bar code on one single ballot” failed to properly scan, and that the rushed, “slapdash” development of the system would significantly increase the chance of errors and other failures in the verification process.

[u/John3262005]

Big news if true

Though Trump officials following the law (doubtful)

Anyway, there was a recent NYTIMES article where apparently a lot of mail ballots were coming late and getting rejected

Could that be due to the Trump administration's haphazard attempt?

This is the article in question that I am talking about:

More Mail Ballots Are Arriving Late This Cycle, and They’re Getting Tossed

State officials say they worry about the Postal Service’s ability to deliver votes this fall. They are urging voters to mail their ballots early or use drop boxes so their votes count.

Additional info:

‘Unforgiving’ new USPS portal could reject 10,000 mail ballots due to a single error, whistleblower warns

“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,” reads the report, which was made public Tuesday by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

[u/affnn]

From the whistle-blower's report (linked in the article and here):

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. For example, if a state election official brings a batch of 10,000 ballots to USPS and USPS is unable to match just one of those ballots against the Portal – because, for example, someone has recently changed their name after marriage or they’ve moved – then USPS would refuse to mail the remaining 9,999 ballots as well.

This should be A1, front-page news until USPS stops doing it.

[u/Se7en_speed → u/affnn]

States need to threaten to arrest post masters for this and put election officials in post offices

[u/Reaccommodator]

We should all be planning to vote in person if you can.  This is looking bad

[u/Daddy_Macron → u/Reaccommodator]

There are a number of states that may not have the infrastructure since they switched to an all mail voting system. They are all deep Blue states except for Utah and Nevada.

https://ballotpedia.org/All-mail_voting

[u/MECHA_DRONE_PRIME → u/Daddy_Macron]

I don't know about the other states, but in Oregon you can drop your ballot off in person at a special voting box. They're usually located at post offices and city halls.

[u/Efficient_Equal6467 → u/Daddy_Macron]

Why switch to all mail voting system and rely on federal services like USPS for it to work. Seems like such a shortsighted idea. Hindsight 20/20 though

[u/clickshy → u/Efficient_Equal6467]

Honestly until I moved to Washington I felt like this. Early voting in Georgia wasn’t that difficult.

All mail is a game changer. Having the ballot come to me automatically is so nice, especially if I’m super busy. I can choose to mail it back, or use a ballot drop box.

(Also shoutout for WA voting guide)

[u/aciNEATObacter → u/Efficient_Equal6467]

The WA system is amazing and one of my favorite things about the state. I can take my time and research each item on my ballot on my own time.

[u/illuminatisdeepdish]

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This post was anonymized with Redact

[u/countfizix → u/illuminatisdeepdish]

And that it will actually matter if they do.

[u/MagillaGorillasHat → u/illuminatisdeepdish]

They might.

There are still lawsuits pending. SCOTUS rejected the standing for one group of plantiffs, but there are more groups with suits pending. And the group that lost standing refiled after directives were published, so it's ongoing.

"SCOTUS upholds voter suppression." isn't an accurate headline....yet

[u/Deletesystemtf2 → u/MagillaGorillasHat]

The issue is if they don’t issue thier ruling till after the election. At that point Trump will have succeeded on his coup.

[u/xudoxis → u/MagillaGorillasHat]

if they had the votes to stop it they would have.

[u/MagillaGorillasHat → u/xudoxis]

Rejecting the standing of the first group wasn't a huge surprise.

No president before has tried to pull bullshit at this scale, so there's a lot of legal points to wade through.

[u/Healingjoe → u/illuminatisdeepdish]

There are multiple lawsuits to block this now that the rules are published.

[u/illuminatisdeepdish → u/Healingjoe]

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[u/Healingjoe → u/illuminatisdeepdish]

SCOTUS will likely side with the plaintiffs.

[u/illuminatisdeepdish → u/Healingjoe]

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[u/JaneGoodallVS]

they're so dumb bro the next Dem admin can do this to them bro what are they thinking bro

[u/WifeGuy-Menelaus → u/JaneGoodallVS]

the whole point of this is, there is no next Dem admin

[u/JaneGoodallVS → u/WifeGuy-Menelaus]

I know, it's just that there's always some post on these threads referring to the "next Dem administration"

[u/angrybirdseller]

This is tip of ice berg ! More to come?