A Postal Service whistleblower told Congress that a new system for screening mail ballots was built so fast, and tested so little, that a single failed barcode scan can reject an entire batch — tens of thousands of ballots at a time — with no appeal. [1][4] Senator Richard Blumenthal released the disclosure on Tuesday, the same date USPS had internally aimed to launch what it calls the Federal Ballot Mail Portal. [4] The portal had not gone live as of this week, the Guardian reported. [1] Reuters correspondent Jacob Bogage told PBS it was not even certain the September 1 completion happened. [2] Do not write that it did.

This paper's Aug. 26 account treated Judge Indira Talwani's violation finding and the next-day lift as a net win for the enforced-against party, not a split decision. Monday's brief said the same fight produced another pause and nothing durable. Tuesday's record is the machinery: a zero-failure barcode rule, a sampling protocol, court-order work-through, and an internal deadline. It is not another injunction headline.

USPS clerks, under the plan, would scan a sample of arriving ballots — 15 to 400, depending on batch size — against a federally uploaded voter-and-barcode list. [1] The whistleblower's disclosure says the system runs on a "zero percent failure rate": one mismatched scan dumps the whole tray. [1][4] Engineers had roughly three months, including a court-ordered pause, for work the whistleblower says would normally take close to a year. [1] The full system was not assembled for testing until about Aug. 24, leaving a handful of working days. [1][4] Officials were calling the effort "a shit show." One worker who raised the lack of testing time was told, "We cannot fail." [1] Blumenthal's letter says teams were siloed, that there were "no clear written requirements," and that as late as Aug. 21 workers were still receiving new requirements, leaving different team members with "different understandings of how the system is supposed to work." [4]

Blumenthal, ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, called the project "perilously rushed and potentially unlawful" and, on a conference call, "designed malfunction." [1][3] "This is not just incompetence, it is designed malfunction," he said. "And it is malign, designed malfunction in a way that clearly reveals a political purpose: depressing the vote." [3] David Kligerman of Whistleblower Aid, which represents the anonymous official, asked whether the flaws were bugs or features. [4] PBS and the Guardian sold operational risk to the midterms. [1][2] They are not wrong about the risk. They are thin on the design charge.

Talwani's temporary injunction was still in force Monday. She declined to stay it and allowed continued development of the portal. [3] Blumenthal's letter alleges USPS kept building under active court orders to stop, including one issued Aug. 27 that remains in force, and that work should have ceased on June 25. [1] Votebeat reported that staff were rushing to meet the internal Sept. 1 deadline anyway, and that Talwani last week criticized the agency for resuming work. [3] A Postal Service spokesperson who had not seen the complaint declined comment Monday. [3] Blumenthal gave Postmaster General David Steiner until Sept. 4 for answers — who ordered the work to begin and resume — and until Sept. 8 for internal records. [1][4] USPS has not disclosed an expected rejection rate, which the whistleblower says was withheld because it would expose how shaky the rollout is. [1] Representative Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on House Oversight, said his panel had received similar reports and called the policy an "unconstitutional and dangerous power grab." [1] Bogage told PBS the portal would "inject the federal government into the voting process of every city, town, village, and hamlet," a role the Constitution leaves to states, and that the Postal Service is "frankly, not equipped for this task." [2] About a third of 2024 voters cast ballots by mail. [1][2] The prediction of mass disruption remains unconfirmed because the system is not, on the public record Tuesday, a live switch. The batch-dump rule is. The September 1 internal deadline is the date the machinery was supposed to exist. The injunction is why it may not. Neither fact is an outcome.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington