Richard Blumenthal released a whistleblower statement Tuesday warning that the U.S. Postal Service is rushing a new mail-ballot computer system under USPS whistleblower mail ballot concerns. The statement said the system could jeopardize mail voting relied upon by one-third of all voters before the midterm elections.
Blumenthal told reporters before releasing the information that, "The Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans" and that, "This administration seems hell-bent on changing the framework on casting ballots in this country clearly for political reasons."
Trump’s March order
Trump’s executive order, signed in March, directed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to develop state citizenship lists. It then required the Postal Service to send mail ballots only to voters on such a list, while ballot envelopes would have to meet new Postal Service rules and include bar codes.
The online portal at issue is meant for states to deliver their lists of verified voters to the Postal Service. The whistleblower said the Postal Service was scrambling to build that system in only three months, even though it would normally take one year or more.
Talwani blocks implementation
After Trump issued the order, Democrats and civil rights groups sued. U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani in Boston barred implementation of the system before the November midterms, and the administration is appealing the ruling.
The whistleblower also said the Postal Service was sometimes acting in defiance of the judge’s orders while the work moved forward. The statement said a single scanning error in a batch of tens of thousands of ballot envelopes could prevent any from reaching voters.
Friday in North Carolina
Election officials warned that the system could not be implemented before the first mail ballots begin going out Friday in North Carolina. That leaves the Postal Service facing a timing problem at the same moment it is trying to prepare a system meant for use in the midterm elections.
The dispute comes as more than 29% of all voters in 2024 cast their ballots through the mail. A Brookings Institution report published in 2025 found that mail voting fraud occurred in about four cases out of every 10 million mail ballots cast, a figure that sits against the White House position that the mail voting provisions are commonsense measures necessary to combat fraud.
Whether the Postal Service can finish the portal, meet the new ballot rules, and move ahead while the court block remains in place is the urgent question now. For voters who rely on the mail, the immediate risk is not theory but timing: the first ballots are already scheduled to start moving out in North Carolina.
