A whistleblower working inside the United States Postal Service (USPS) has told Congress that a brand-new system for screening mail-in ballots — built in a matter of months, against the advice of the agency’s own staff — is so rushed and untested that it risks mass rejection of legitimate ballots just as the 2026 midterms approach.
The allegations are laid out in an anonymous disclosure filed on Aug. 30 with the office of Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) through the nonprofit legal group Whistleblower Aid. The whistleblower, described as a federal official with direct knowledge of the project, says USPS leadership pushed for a Sept. 1 launch despite internal warnings that the software hadn’t been properly built or tested, and that development continued at points even while federal courts had ordered the work to stop. Blumenthal’s letter demands USPS turn over records and answer detailed questions about the system by early September.
The launch of the new portal is partly in response to a Trump executive order from March 31 directing USPS to write new rules governing how mail-in and absentee ballots move through the postal system. Trump has been adamant the 2020 election was stolen from him, even as recently as last month, as he cited a dubious Census Bureau report to back up his “election fraud” claims.
A 2025 Brookings analysis found that mail-in voter fraud was “very rare,” according to their findings. An additional analysis by American Immigration Council also concluded that the Heritage Foundation’s report on noncitizen voting proved there “is no crisis of noncitizen voting” and that it’s “exceedingly rare.”
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