USPS whistleblower warns new ballot system could fail - Axios

A U.S. Postal Service whistleblower is alleging the agency defied court orders while rushing to build a new ballot-processing system that could reject thousands of mail ballots across the country.

The system was built in weeks, according to the whistleblower, rather than the nine months to a year that a project of this complexity would normally require. It stems from an executive order signed by President Trump directing the federal government to generate lists of confirmed U.S. Citizens eligible to vote, and requiring the postmaster general to propose a rule barring USPS from transmitting ballots for anyone not on their state's list.

The rule appeared in the Federal Register, but the whistleblower's core concern is that the speed of development leaves the system prone to failure, and that the agency bypassed court orders in the process. For voters who rely on mail ballots, that is not a small worry. Any system error that flags a legitimate voter as ineligible could mean their ballot never gets counted, with no guarantee they would know it happened.

Lubbock County has a sizable population of rural voters and older residents who depend on mail-in voting, so a system that rejects ballots at scale would hit people here in a real and direct way.

Federal judges may have to sort out the question of whether USPS defied court orders before the next election.