2026-09-01T10:01:29.078Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/01/politics/usps-whistleblower-mail-ballot-rules-trump
据民主党参议员周二发布的一份新举报人报告显示，美国邮政总局为验证邮寄选票而开发的全面新系统引发了该局官员的诸多IT担忧，一些人在内部将该过程描述为“一场狗屁不通的混乱闹剧”。
这位不愿透露姓名的举报人指控称，美国邮政总局根据唐纳德·特朗普总统提出的指令计划实施的部分程序并未向公众公开。举报人表示，这些程序将使本已复杂且风险重重的计划更容易出现大规模剥夺选民投票权的潜在可能。
这份由举报人律师整理、康涅狄格州参议员理查德·布卢门撒尔发布的新报告发布之际，多家法院正在审议该提案的合法性。该提案要求各州向美国邮政总局提交邮寄选民名单。如果美国邮政总局系统中的选民信息与该局在选票信封上扫描到的信息存在任何不符，该机构将不会为这些州递送选票。
报告称：“看起来美国邮政总局的领导层在加速推进该项目以确保在9月1日上线时，抛弃了所有最佳实践——这让人不禁质疑，灾难性故障会不会是设计使然，而非程序漏洞。”
CNN已联系美国邮政总局征求置评。
特朗普于3月签署行政命令，赋予美国邮政总局在筛查各州邮寄选票项目方面前所未有的权力。选举官员此前已对不得不使用一套未经过充分测试和培训的系统表示深切担忧。
据举报人透露，由于选举日程时间紧迫，美国邮政总局的IT团队在系统完成后仅获得不到一周的时间进行测试；北卡罗来纳州本周开始邮寄选票，其他州也将在本月晚些时候跟进。
根据举报人报告，目前尚不清楚该门户网站能否如原定目标那样于周二上线。一名法官上周冻结了相关指令，该指令要求各州若希望美国邮政总局递送选票，则必须使用该系统，但法官同时表示，美国邮政总局仍可向自愿上传邮寄选民信息的各州提供该门户网站。美国司法部正在就该裁决提起上诉。
混乱的开发与测试流程
举报人在报告中称，在测试的最后一周，多名工作人员用“狗屁不通的混乱闹剧”来形容该流程，同时还列举了美国邮政总局在创建该系统过程中草率推进的其他案例。举报人表示，IT人员看到的系统计划从一开始就“不断变更”，而且开发人员并未收到书面形式明确的系统需求。
美国邮政总局领导层对担忧之声不屑一顾，报告称其“坚称所需内容一目了然，而且也没有时间将需求书面化”。
报告描述了一种随系统模块就绪便仓促开展测试的混乱做法。根据为赶上9月1日截止日期制定的时间表，系统将仅获得四天时间用于开发过程中的一个阶段，即系统潜在用户可在此阶段进行测试。
“对于一个管理投票和选票这类至关重要事务的系统来说，四天的用户测试完全不合理，”举报人报告称。
人们对该系统未经过充分测试的担忧尤为强烈，因为如果选举官员提交的选民名单与他们计划寄送的选票信息存在任何不符，美国邮政总局可能会拒收整批选票——这意味着一次可能有数万张选票无法寄出——直到不符之处得到解决。
举报人表示，将有一轮首轮验证——该流程并未在公开规定中明确说明——将门户网站中的选民信息与选举官员必须为其打算交付的每一批选票提交的“清单”进行比对。报告称，根据相关规则，选举官员必须为每位选民分配唯一条形码，清单上的信息必须与门户网站中的信息完全匹配，之后选举官员才能交付选票。
据举报人透露，当选举官员将选票送至美国邮政总局站点投递时，将根据选票投递地点，对整批选票信封或其中一部分进行物理扫描。只要有一张选票信封的扫描结果与门户网站中的信息不符，美国邮政总局就会拒绝递送整批选票，直至不符之处得到协调解决。
“按照目前的设计，该流程毫无容错空间。它可能会在反复的验证周期中延误数千张选票的寄送——从而阻止各州寄出大量选票，”报告称。
USPS whistleblower says system for Trump mail ballot rules could fail at multiple points
2026-09-01T10:01:29.078Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/01/politics/usps-whistleblower-mail-ballot-rules-trump
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.
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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