USPS whistleblower describes new plans for voting by mail hidden from the public
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The US Postal Service effort to develop a sweeping new system for verifying mail ballots has invited a host of IT concerns among agency officials, with some describing the process internally as a “sh*t show,” according to a new whistleblower report released Tuesday by a Democratic senator.
The unnamed whistleblower is alleging that some of the procedures USPS is planning – under mandates put forward by President Donald Trump – have been hidden from the public. Those procedures will make an already complicated and risky plan even more vulnerable to potential mass disenfranchisement, the whistleblower says.
The new report – which was assembled by the whistleblowers’ lawyers and released by Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal – comes as multiple courts are considering the legality of the proposal , which would require that states submit to USPS lists of their mail-in voters. The agency will not deliver ballots for states if there are any discrepancies between the voter information in the USPS system and what’s picked up by agency scanners on the envelopes of the ballots.
“USPS leadership, it appears, has discarded all best practices as they speed the project to be ready for a September 1 implementation - raising questions about whether catastrophic failure would be a feature rather than a bug,” said the report.
CNN has reached out to USPS for comment.
Trump signed an executive order in March that gave the USPS an unprecedented role in screening states’ mail ballot programs. Election officials have already expressed deep concerns about having to use a system that has not gone through extensive testing and training procedures
Internally, according to the whistleblower, USPS’ IT teams were going to be given less than a week to test the system once it was finished, due to the time crunch of the electoral calendar; North Carolina begins sending ballots this week and other states join it later this month.
It’s not clear whether the portal is ready to be launched on Tuesday, as was the goal, according to the whistleblower report. A judge last week froze the mandates that the states use the system if they want USPS to deliver their ballots, but said USPS could still offer the portal to states that voluntarily want to upload the mail voter information. The Justice Department is appealing that ruling.
Haphazard development and testing process
In the final week of testing, the phrase “sh*t show” was used by multiple people to describe the process, the whistleblower alleges in the report, which identifies other examples of USPS barreling through the process of creating the system. The plans the IT staff were shown for the system were “constantly changing” from the beginning, and systems’ requirements were not clearly put in writing for the development staff, the whistleblower says.
USPS leadership was dismissive of concerns, and, according to the report “insisted that it was easy to understand what was needed and also that there was no time to write down the requirements.”
The report describes a haphazard effort to test the parts of the system as they became ready. Under the timeline sketched out to meet the September 1 deadline, there would only be four days allotted for it to go through a stage in the development process in which potential users of the system can test it out.
“For a system that manages something as important as handling voting and ballots, 4 days of user testing is entirely unreasonable,” the whistleblower report said.
Verification procedures with no room for error
The concerns about the untested nature of the system are particularly acute because if there are any discrepancies between the voter lists that election officials have submitted and the ballots they’re seeking to send, USPS could reject the entire batches of ballots – meaning tens of thousands of ballots could go unsent at a time – until the discrepancy is fixed.
The whistleblower says that there will be a first round of verification – in a process not spelled out in the public regulations – comparing the voter information in the portal with “manifests” election officials must also submit for each batch of ballots they intend to drop off. The information on the manifests – including unique bar codes election officials are required, under the rules, to assign each voter – must match perfectly with the information in the portal before election officials are allowed drop off the ballots, the report says.
When election officials bring ballots to their USPS site for delivery, either the entire batch of ballot envelopes or a sampling will be physically scanned – depending on where the ballots are being dropped, according to the whistleblower. If just a single ballot envelope scan does not align with the information in the portal, USPS will refuse to deliver the entire batch of ballots while the discrepancy is being sorted out.
“As designed, the process is entirely unforgiving. It could delay ballots by the thousands in repeated verification cycles - and thus prevent states from mailing enormous numbers of ballots,” the report says.
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The fascist Trumpist regime working hard to end American democracy.
the self appointed maga defenders of the US Constitution are working overtime to dispel that myth ...
Isn't it a federal crime to interfere with the postal service's delivery of the mail?
Yes but since when has this administration ever cared about laws?
Can't argue that... Guess that's what happens when you put a 34 count felon and pedophile in charge of the law enforcement branch of the government.
Why is the USPS getting involved with mail-in ballots? Just send them and stop fucking around.
Another attempt to subvert the election process
Trump issued a Führerbefehl and it must be obeyed.
you're always sending me to the library...
It's good for the brain, especially as we get older. Keeps it active and healthy.
my brain gets a different kind of workout ... >cough< ...
People are saying that it’s actually the witches who are actually behind this!. 🧙
Witch people? And which witches are they referring to?
A furball! That's where he coughs and says, "Accccchhhttpppt!" right?
the postmaster general is a trumpster that tried to fuck with mail in voting in the last election. he'll be doing a perp walk in 2029, provided he's still breathing by then ...
Isn't the USPS's job to deliver the mail? I mean...just deliver the goddamn mail???? The ballots! Send them where they are supposed to go and stop being jag-offs!
"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" - unknown persian quote
while it's not the official USPS creed or motto, it wouldn't be too difficult to add christo-fascist or maga traitors to it ...
The degree of potential voter disenfranchisement is a direct assault on the constitutionally guaranteed right of states to administer our sacrosanct electoral process.
And our GOP county clerk agrees. The extensive training, redundancy of regulations, and the bipartisan infrastructure behind the scenes ensure a fair and transparent outcome.
Are there instances of voting fraud? Yes. But those cases are exceedingly rare and it does not rise to the level that this administration would have any credibility in trashing a system that has proven effective. It is blatant authoritarianism and a very serious threat to our democracy. Indefensible, insidious and unjust.
result of Republican policy to disenfranchise eligible likely Democratic voters. It's as simple as that. They've been doing it decades, they've just gotten bolder about it under Trump as he gives racists, bigots, assholes, white supremacists and other rightwing conservative's cover for their odorous inhumane beliefs and ideology.
I look forward to going retro to the late 60's and early 70's in a little over 2 months. here maga, maga, maga, come get some ...
Morning...is it true I think I read somewhere that Trump of Dump Trump Lake can actually get the arse in Nov??
Please let it be true...we live in hope. 😁
there's speculation that trump will resign with a vance pardon in an attempt to escape impeachment, if maga loses the house and senate and democrats have enough votes to try him in the senate ...
in my state, the maga moron running for governor is now claiming he's met satan in person during one of his exorcisms ...
I think Trump is too narcissistic to even resign as that would be considered "losing" to him and he'll never admit to ever losing anything, ever. That leaves us with the other options of doing something to make himself look like a victim. I'm not saying he'd orchestrate a fake assassination attempt to garner widespread support but making this difficult for those tasked with protecting him, putting himself in harm's way basically asking for someone to throw something at him would be enough for him to claim the hateful left tried to kill him and that he'd have to have emergency powers to deal with such a threat to an American President. That's very on brand for these charlatan's and they know it would easily fool their gullible base because let's face it, Trumps sycophants believe anything and everything he says and will do anything he tells them to. He could literally piss in their faces and tell them it's raining, and their reports of the event will just bemoan the weather.
trump doesn't lose, in his mind. he never loses, he spins the story or assigns the blame. he'll do everything he can to throw the election, then when the inevitable happens, he'll obstruct the process and constitutional deadlines as much as possible, while he concocts the foundation of a story he'll use to dodge the constitutional bullet and justifying to his cult the many reasons why he had to quit. the only real problem trump has with quitting, running from the law, is the same problem as his last term. he has to trust a VP with his gambit.
Polis? The Gay Governor??? I thought he was sane!
It takes 67 votes in the Senate to Impeach a President. Even if the Dems take the Upper Chamber they won't have those numbers.
but....maybe some republicans will find their spines and do their jobs
If the midterms go against the gop, and as trump and his ‘policies’ continue to crater and in so doing make him the lamest of lame ducks, you will see the rats abandoning the sinking ship.
trump is an aberration but the way his party looked the other way on every issue in enabling the inanity is the most confusing, née disgusting aspect of his tenure.
Spineless indeed.
At this point, I would say not a chance.
Here is why. I expected Trump would cross a line that would trigger the GoPTRUMP to realize that he is dangerous and that this is bad for them personally. Well, Trump has crossed that line many times, and the spineless fucks continue to let him do as he pleases. Most recently, they are co-conspirators in trying to rig the November elections.
It should have already happened.
Maybe you are right. Maybe the hard reality will hit these spineless, worthless wastes of a Senate seat with a crushing defeat in November. Maybe they will understand that there is no good reason to support Trump since he is bad for the nation and bad for them personally. Maybe. But as we can see even here, there are GoP members who will fight for their party NO MATTER WHAT . Blind partisanship, blind loyalty to a name (GoP) regardless of what the party is actually doing. No recognition that the GoP is the Grand Old Party in name only nowadays. No recognition that the actual GoP has been displaced by some mangled, corrupt version that I refer to as GoP TRUMP .
Just sickening that the human mind can be so ensnared by a demagogue.
Doubt it. More like they will double down on their plan to push a white, patriarchal, Evangelical, theocracy.
here's my solution
worked in late 18th century France...
My wife's aunt and uncle tried to get us involved in some of the No Kings shit. I told until they start rolling the guillotines through the streets, they were wasting their time.
Kinda my attitude
no, the guy's name is victor marx, seriously. he's all over youtube saying wacko shit, even for a trump dick sucker ...
his opponents in the republican primary for governor were another thumper POS that claimed democrats in the colorado statehouse were a cabal that sex trafficked children and some bimbo that was against abortionn for any reason and was part of a teabag movement a decade ago to secede the northern part of the state from colorado.
polis lost his mojo in the state by commuting tina peters' prison sentence without getting anything from POS/POTUS in return. he's term limited and out in november.
I've got friends that wanted me to engage in those protests, but as a child of the 60's/70's that was involved in protests, I won't be putting myself into any environment with the possibility of maga involvement without being armed to the teeth.
thanks for the correction. I didn't read it right
I think there are some other variables in play. self preservation is as important as greed to most republicans, and a few might just see the writing on the wall if an electoral massacre takes place. plus, the senate makes it's own rules and there might not be 100 elected senators still breathing by then ...
I doubt they'll find many living survivors in the smouldering rubble of their thumper madrasas the next monday morning ...