Trump administration still hasn’t denied USPS whistleblower’s claims

The Trump administration has repeatedly gone to court this week seeking to revive its sweeping mail ballot restrictions before the midterms. But it still has not directly denied some of the most alarming allegations about how the U.S. Postal Service plans to enforce them.

A whistleblower familiar with USPS’s development of its new mail ballot system alleged Monday that the agency rushed the project, failed to adequately test it and designed a verification process under which a single barcode error could result in thousands of ballots being rejected before they are ever mailed to voters.

Days later, after multiple court filings defending the rule — including a declaration submitted specifically after a federal judge demanded more information about when the system would launch and how it would work — the administration has not rebutted those allegations.

That silence has become increasingly palpable as the legal fight reaches the Supreme Court.

The whistleblower alleged that USPS plans to use a “zero-percent failure policy” when checking batches of ballots against information submitted by election officials through a new Federal Ballot Mail Portal. Under the system as described by the whistleblower, if even one barcode on one ballot in a bulk mailing of as many as 10,000 fails to scan properly, the entire batch could be rejected and returned to election officials.

The whistleblower also described the portal’s development as “rushed” and “insufficiently tested,” warning that the system could experience serious technical failures shortly before millions of Americans begin voting by mail.

USPS has not said those claims are false.

“We’ve seen no denial from the Postal Service that the whistleblower said anything that was inaccurate,” David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, told reporters Friday. “It appears that what the whistleblower has said is accurately depicting what the Postal Service intends to do.”

The silence itself may not independently establish that every whistleblower allegation is accurate. But the administration has had several opportunities to explain or dispute the claims since they became public — and so far has not done so.

The most notable opportunity came Thursday.

During a hearing in Boston, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani repeatedly pressed the Department of Justice (DOJ) for details about how USPS’s new rule would actually operate. At one point, frustrated by the government’s lack of information about the still-unfinished portal, Talwani gave DOJ the opportunity to supplement the record with additional information about the system. 

The government later submitted a declaration from Steven Monteith, USPS’s chief customer and marketing officer.

Monteith disclosed that USPS was still making “refinements” to the Federal Ballot Mail Portal and did not expect it to be available even for voluntary use until “sometime next week.” But the declaration did not address the whistleblower’s allegations about the batch-verification process or the alleged zero-percent failure policy.

The states challenging the rule pointed that omission out themselves in a filing to the Supreme Court Thursday night.

While Monteith provided updates on the portal, states wrote, his declaration was “notably silent” about USPS’s plans for verification and “said nothing to counter” the whistleblower’s allegations of “slapdash software development,” insufficient testing and the batch-rejection process.

The administration also did not directly address those claims in its emergency application to the Supreme Court.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that USPS will compare barcode information on mailed ballots with data election officials upload to the portal. Mailings that fail the new requirements, the government said, would be returned to election officials, who could correct errors and resubmit them.

But the filing does not say whether one failed barcode could cause USPS to reject an entire batch — the specific mechanism at the center of the whistleblower’s warning.

That omission matters because the administration is simultaneously asking courts to let USPS begin mandating compliance with the system before the midterms.

The Postal Service’s final rule requires state and local election officials to submit voter names, addresses and unique ballot barcodes through the new portal. USPS has said it could refuse to accept mailings that do not comply with the requirements.

Election officials and voting-rights groups have warned that implementing those requirements on such a compressed timeline could disrupt ballot delivery. The whistleblower went further, warning that failures within USPS’s own verification process could prevent large numbers of otherwise lawful ballots from reaching voters.

Becker said Friday he could not explain how USPS arrived at an alleged policy where one error could jeopardize an entire mailing.

“I can’t tell you how an internal discussion at the Postal Service could possibly have resulted in the idea that a single typographical error on a single ballot would result in the rejection of an entire batch of those ballots,” he said.

The administration is now asking the Supreme Court to lift Talwani’s temporary order blocking mandatory enforcement of the rule while she considers a preliminary injunction.

Yet even as DOJ argues that immediate Supreme Court intervention is necessary, USPS has acknowledged that the central portal needed to carry out the rule is not yet ready — and neither agency has directly answered one of the biggest questions hanging over the system: whether a single mistake could really toss thousands of ballots before they ever reach voters.