Trump sparks midterm election chaos as whistleblower issues terrifying warning on rushed postal ballots

The US Postal Service's new mail-in ballot portal is untested, flawed and could result in 'catastrophic failure' should it be implemented before November's midterm elections, according to a jarring new whistleblower report released Tuesday. The report, made public by Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, detailed problems with 'every stage' of the US Postal Service's effort to build out its technical system, which would be used to compare mail-in ballots against a central repository of registered voters compiled from information from all US states.The agency's sprint to complete the portal comes as President Donald Trump has sought to assert more federal control over voting, including tasking USPS with additional oversight of the mail-in voting process. A federal judge in Boston temporarily blocked Trump's executive order last week, prompting the Justice Department to punt the matter to the 1st Circuit US Court of Appeals. Barring intervention, the Justice Department will almost certainly seek emergency relief via the Supreme Court, which granted Trump's request to lift a related injunction just days earlier. It's a race across the clock that comes just days before states begin sending out their own ballots - North Carolina will begin doing so this Friday, September 4, and Alabama will follow suit beginning next week. But the uncertainty surrounding the implementation of Trump's proposed restrictions is not the only issue threatening to inject chaos in this year's elections, as the whistleblower report makes clear. The report describes USPS's new procedures as 'rushed,' 'risky' and 'haphazard' - the result of an 'impossible' time frame that Trump gave the agency to tighten its mail-in voting requirements, and vet the mail-in ballots from various states against its own internal lists. Critics say this could inject chaos into the results of the November midterms, given the number of Americans that cast their ballots by mail. Demonstrators hold up signs as they attend a 'Defend the Vote' rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, in August 2026. Trump signed an order in March seeking to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the midterms, but it was immediately met with multiple legal challenges A mail-in ballot drop box sits on a table on the first day of Virginia's in-person early voting on September 20, 2024. A new whistleblower report details 'potentially catastrophic' problems with a new USPS system for handling mail-in ballots Protesters hold up a sign as they attend a 'Defend the Vote' rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC'One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail,' Blumenthal said of the new process. 'The USPS puts all of their votes at risk.' Concerns about the new system are further compounded due to a 'zero-percent failure' USPS also adopted alongside the portal - which the whistleblower report said could result in a massive rejection of ballots with no opportunity for appeal. Effectively, that means that tens of thousands of other ballots could be rejected and returned to the state without clear next steps for resolution, according to the report. This could lead to widespread invalidation of ballots if there is a single barcode issue on a ballot, or if one person failed to update their voter registration card to include a new last name or address after getting married, divorced, or moving. 'As designed, the process is entirely unforgiving,’ the report said. ‘It could delay ballots by the thousands in repeated verification cycles - and thus prevent states from mailing enormous numbers of ballots.’The whistleblower complaint was sent to Blumenthal’s office by Whistleblower Aid, which represents the unnamed individual. The person was identified only as a ‘federal official with direct knowledge of potentially catastrophic problems in the development’ of the Postal Service’s plans. Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, speaks out before a confirmation vote for Trump's attorney general nominee An election worker processes mail-in ballots at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center in June 2026 Trump speaks at a Make America Great Again campaign rally in Arizona Blumenthal, for his part, said in a statement Tuesday that the new USPS system is ‘set up to fail,’ and risks the right to vote 'for millions of Americans who cast their ballots by mail.‘Given this new information, such sloppiness and haste seems clearly part of a purposeful attempt to create chaos and prevent people from voting,' Blumenthal said in a statement shared with the Daily Mail. 'I am demanding answers and accountability.’