A U.S. Postal Service (USPS) official has alleged that the agency rushed development of ballot-mail IT systems and bypassed normal testing procedures ahead of the November midterm elections.
In an Aug. 31 letter to Postmaster General and CEO David Steiner, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., disclosed the allegations and urged USPS to abandon the plan outlined by the whistleblower.
According to Blumenthal’s letter, the USPS official alleged that efforts to develop and deploy the Federal Ballot Mail Portal and related IT systems have been “rushed, risky, and haphazard” because agency leadership demanded an “impossible timeframe.”
“In an effort to meet impossible deadlines, USPS has eliminated standard and needed testing, thereby creating substantial risk of a ‘catastrophic failure’ of the system that could ‘derail the midterm elections,’” the letter reads.
The Federal Ballot Mail Portal is part of USPS’s implementation of President Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order on election integrity, which directed the agency to take additional steps related to mail-in ballots and establish agreements with states on ballot receipt deadlines.
The whistleblower alleged that development of the portal began around June 15 with a Sept. 1 launch date, stopped for roughly a month following a court injunction, and resumed around July 29. Despite the pause, USPS leadership maintained the Sept. 1 launch date, according to Blumenthal’s letter.
The whistleblower alleged that the compressed timeline left USPS unable to fully test the portal, troubleshoot problems, or distribute instructions to state election officials before launch. The official said the portal “violates standard principles of testing and debugging new software before launch.”
“Normal procedures at USPS for such systems include internal testing, customer acceptance testing, and a final development stage before release to public facing users,” Blumenthal wrote. “The Portal has gone through none of these basic checks.”
Beyond concerns about the portal’s development and testing, the whistleblower also raised concerns about a new verification standard for ballot mail that the disclosure said would allow no failures.
Historically, USPS has issued guidance to election officials on ballot mail but has not imposed specific requirements that states must follow for the agency to deliver ballots, according to Blumenthal’s letter. Under a final rule issued Aug. 26 in response to Trump’s executive order, USPS would be able to refuse ballot mail submitted by state election officials for the first time.
According to Blumenthal’s letter, if one ballot in a large-volume batch cannot be verified through the portal, USPS would reject the entire batch.
“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,” Blumenthal wrote. “This change is a marked and deeply troubling departure from USPS’s traditionally restrained role as a mail carrier.”
Blumenthal also raised concerns about the process for challenging a rejection if the portal incorrectly identifies a ballot as unverified. According to his letter, the rule states only that election officials “will be informed of the escalation procedures should they decide to challenge a rejection.”
Blumenthal warned that voters may not know their ballots were rejected – or included in a rejected batch – until it is too late to obtain another ballot or vote in person.
“Expecting a well-built, thoughtful Portal to return an accurate result 100 percent of the time is already a stretch – expecting a ‘rushed,’ ‘risky and haphazard’ Portal to do the same is a recipe for disaster,” the letter reads.
The whistleblower also alleged broader management problems, including teams working without clear written requirements, receiving conflicting direction, and duplicating work because of poor communication. According to the letter, workers were still receiving new requirements on Aug. 21 – 11 days before the planned Sept. 1 launch.
“Each of these problems: rushed development; a zero percent failure rate; and poor management are cause for concern on their own. Taken together they present a clear picture of a fatally flawed process that cannot and will not protect American voters,” the letter reads. “Put plainly: this process will likely lead to chaos, confusion, and the inability of many Americans to have their vote counted.”
Blumenthal asked Steiner to preserve the Postal Service’s traditional ballot-mail role and avoid placing additional technical barriers between election officials and USPS acceptance of ballots. He asked USPS to respond to the disclosure by Sept. 4 as the agency prepares for the November midterms.