USPS whistleblower says Trump's 'chaotic' mail-in voting rules could disenfranchise thousands

A whistleblower has raised concerns that the new rules developed by the U.S. Postal Service on mail-in voting are problematic, saying the process to come up with them was, quote, “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed.”

At the same time, someone familiar with the process says USPS officials have acknowledged the rules could stop ballots from getting to many eligible voters — but moved those rules forward anyway.

Jen Fifield of Propublica has written about this and joined The Show to talk more about it.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Jen, good morning.

JEN FIFIELD: Thanks for having me on.

MARK BRODIE: Thanks for being here. So, let’s start with the whistleblower complaint. The complaint was made to a U.S. senator from Connecticut. What is that whistleblower alleging here?

JEN FIFIELD: So, President Donald Trump directed the Postal Service to create new rules around mail voting. They had to have states give them lists of all eligible voters, voters that could receive ballots in the mail, and then they required USPS to use those lists to determine who gets ballots in the mail. They were tasked with creating new rules around this and new details for how the actual technology would work around it.

This whistleblower said that they were given a lack of direction as they started to work on the new technology. Their questions weren’t answered. They were rushed. They were told to do this in weeks when typically a complicated system like this would take months. And they wouldn’t acknowledge that any errors would occur. They were expecting it to be perfect.

If there was a ballot that was to be rejected because they didn’t have a voter name on a list, that would hold up potentially tens of thousands of ballots in that batch. So, you would have wide swaths of voters that would not get their ballots or wouldn’t get them within the timeframe they were supposed to.

So this whistleblower came out and was warning that there could be disenfranchisement if this rule does take effect.

MARK BRODIE: That aspect you just mentioned in terms of like one problematic ballot or one mismatch ballot causing problems for potentially thousands of other voters, that seems to be a pretty big component of what critics are concerned about here, yeah?

JEN FIFIELD: This was something that I heard not just from the whistleblower but also with someone familiar with the rulemaking process. Top officials at USPS met in meetings to try to figure out how to craft rules. And as they did, this person I spoke with said there was much discussion about how controversial this was, how they could limit the impact to voters while complying with Trump’s rules.

And one repeated concern that came up was that if this one ballot problem came up, they would have to set aside the entire batch. And that’s also something that came up at a USPS talk with election officials last month, where in Maricopa County, for example, the example was given that when we send out ballots here, it’s more than 2 million ballots that go out in this first mailing because we have so many mail voters.

If there’s one bad barcode, if the barcode is not printed well, if the voter information is wrong — it’s really hard to keep voter information up to date because of how often people move and request ballots — then that could potentially hold up our entire first mailing here. So, that was definitely a theme as I spoke to people about this that they were most concerned about.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so given some of these concerns, why, like from the folks with whom you spoke, what did they say about why officials continued to move these rules up the chain anyway?

Jen Fifield

JEN FIFIELD: Well, when you get an executive order from the president, it’s almost like getting a new law from Congress or getting a new directive from new regulations. These are public servants. These are people who are used to responding quickly to new rules and new laws. And so they would treat this as if it was any other rule coming down. They need to try to make it work, try to make it work quickly on deadline.

And it’s really not their choice as to whether it goes into effect or not. Others are challenging this rule in the courts, so it is on hold right now. But I think they’re, from the discussions I had, it wasn’t like the leaders were pushing this forward on their own accord.

MARK BRODIE: OK. So, in terms of some of the concerns that folks had, how many of them were policy concerns and how many of them were maybe technology concerns? Because obviously, some of the election officials have said, “Look, we don’t necessarily have the capacity to do this in the timeframe that you’re telling us we need to do this.”

JEN FIFIELD: Right. So, in Arizona, we have these intelligent barcodes on our ballots where we’re able to get text messages about where our ballot is in the system. “Your ballot was just received.” “Your ballot is coming out to you.”

Not every place has that info. Most of the country does not. And that is what is needed to make this new system that USPS is proposing work.

So, before ballots go out to military voters this month, they would need to redesign their ballot envelopes to put these barcodes, get them approved by USPS, and figure out a way to send them these voter lists through this portal that has not yet been released. So, there’s just — everything is up in the air.

Like I said, it’s currently on hold by the court, but the Supreme Court is expected to decide this soon. But they still say that … election officials do not see a way for this to happen this month.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so given that, as you say, this is still in the courts, the Supreme Court will have to weigh in, but also ballots — you reference ballots going out to military and overseas voters in the coming weeks. How is all this going to play out?

JEN FIFIELD: I mean, North Carolina is going to send out military ballots in two days, and overseas ballots. So, other states may be a little bit even ahead of us on that. And I think Trump has said North Carolina can figure it out. “They’re smart,” was kind of his comment on this.

And that’s what we hear within these concerns that were raised internally was that this is what we need to do. And so we will figure it out. In the courts, that is a main argument that it is too late to do this for this election.

Some of these things like the barcodes are best practices. Voters want to know where their ballots are, tracking is great. But it’s just, you know, putting this all together within weeks and having this complicated system not developed yet.

MARK BRODIE: Interesting. All right, lots more to come on this for sure. That is Jen Fifield of ProPublica. Jen, thanks as always.

JEN FIFIELD: Thank you.