2026-09-02T09:00:29.382Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
特朗普政府强制改革选举选票处理方式的努力，可能面临比全国范围内的法院诉讼和抵制更大的障碍：选举官员坚称，他们根本来不及遵守拟议中的新规。
在法庭文件和接受CNN采访时，选举官员和其他邮寄投票专家表示，即便各州能筹到合规所需的数百万美元资金，也没有实际办法遵守美国邮政总局（USPS）的计划。
本届政府将新的邮政规则描述为对各州的“适度”调整，但如果州或地方官员不符合邮寄投票项目的要求，邮政总局将不会递送他们的选票——这可能导致大规模选民被剥夺选举权。
供应商已告知选举官员，没有足够时间印制根据新规需要重新设计的数百万个信封。根据法庭文件，甚至可能没有足够的纸张库存来完成这项工作。
要让当地选举管理员获得授权并接受该机构新设的一个全新门户网站的培训，该网站用于上传各州邮寄选民名单，将耗费数千小时的工作人员时间。
“距离选票寄出只剩几周时间，美国邮政总局连这项工作将如何开展的基本问题都答不上来。显然他们自己都不清楚，”科罗拉多州杰斐逊县的县文员阿曼达·冈萨雷斯告诉CNN。该县将寄出43.3万张邮寄选票。
“这些不是微不足道的实施细节——它们决定着数百万符合资格的选民能否拿到选票，”作为民主党人竞选科罗拉多州务卿的冈萨雷斯说道。“到了这个阶段，即便我们打赢官司、新规不会实施，由此造成的不确定性本身就是选举风险。”
正因为如此，选举官员和相关从业人员并未对该规定可能带来的后果感到恐慌，而是将注意力集中在已经给选民造成的直接混乱上。在与公众的沟通中，选举官员一直在明确传达一个信息：11月的选举将如期举行，选民通过邮寄或其他方式投票的权利将得到保障。
周二公布的一份美国邮政总局举报人报告进一步加剧了不确定性。报告指控该机构仅用几天时间就对一个仓促搭建的系统进行了测试，该系统用于录入该计划要求的选民信息。报告称，该机构打算如果一批信封中仅有一个信封的信息与门户网站不符，就整批拒收选票，这加剧了系统信息技术漏洞带来的风险，可能影响部分辖区内数万名潜在选民的投票权。
目前，这些强制要求已被联邦法院的一项临时裁决暂停，政府正在对该裁决提起上诉。但该问题已经一路上诉至最高法院——最高法院曾批准政府制定最终规则方案——如今最终方案已经公布，预计该案将再次提交大法官们审理。
“大多数选举官员在3月份看到行政命令时，都埋头推进初选、为中期选举做准备，”全国选举官员协会首席项目主管塔米·帕特里克说道。上月美国邮政总局的最终计划公布时，“许多官员听到规则内容后都感到震惊。”
白宫驳回了选举官员的担忧，称考虑到该提案早在“数月前”就已公布，他们本应有所准备。
“任何混乱都是激进民主党人的诉讼造成的，他们试图阻止这些保护邮寄选票安全、确保只有美国公民选举美国领导人的常识性措施，”白宫发言人劳伦·比斯在一份声明中说道。
美国邮政总局一位发言人周二在给CNN的声明中表示，该机构正在“仔细审查”举报人提出的担忧。
“美国邮政总局花了数月时间开发美国联邦选票邮寄门户网站，为选举官员提供一种简单、安全、高效的方式，分享各自州内将收到邮寄选票的选民名单。这项工作始终符合法院命令的要求，”该发言人说道。
“无论属于哪个政党或持有何种观点，我们都有一个共同目标：确保美国人能够放心他们的选举邮件将得到安全处理和可靠递送，”该发言人说道。
在法庭文件中，美国邮政总局为这些要求进行了辩护，指出他们依据的是与“其他类似敏感但无危险物品（如骨灰或仿制爆炸物）的特殊处理和接收条件”相同的法律，这些物品都存在独特的运营顾虑。
尽管法律程序一波三折，选举官员仍专注于顺利开展选举，同时向选民保证，他们可以像以往一样通过邮寄方式投票。选举官员预计，特朗普的行政令将在被恢复和再次叫停之间反复，但由于11月必须举行选举，遵守该计划的实际障碍已变得无法逾越。
内华达州务卿思科·阿吉拉尔告诉CNN的达纳·巴什，新的举报人披露让他“感到不安”和“非常担忧”，但他表示，随着诉讼继续进行，他和其他民主党州务卿“不会让步，不会让本届政府 dictate 选举的运作方式”。（注：原文此处为“dictate”，直译“ dictate”不符合中文新闻表达，调整为“主导”更通顺，符合语境）
美国邮政总局要求，寄给选民的“外寄”信封和寄回选举办公室的“回寄”信封，都必须带有针对每位选民的唯一自动化追踪条形码。
在许多邮寄投票普及的辖区，“外寄”信封上已经普遍印有唯一条形码，但回寄信封上则不那么常见。根据法庭文件，在邮寄投票不那么普及的农村地区，两种信封都可能缺少所需的条形码，宾夕法尼亚州十多个县的情况就是如此。
对一些州来说，重新印制选票的成本可能高达数百万美元。华盛顿州选举总监斯图尔特·霍姆斯在法庭文件中表示，该州近100万个县的回寄选票信封需要更换，因此成本接近200万美元。
霍姆斯上周联系了该州用于邮寄选票的三家主要供应商，撇开成本不谈，没有一家能够确认可以及时重新印制选票。
“我们根本不可能满足美国邮政总局的要求，”霍姆斯告诉CNN。
俄勒冈州选举办公室在一份法庭文件中表示，如果该规则生效，全国各辖区都将订购重新印制的选票，这将进一步加剧供应链瓶颈。
“（供应商）没有纸张库存，而且疫情后的纸张供应短缺意味着纸张供应商可能无法及时向我们的供应商提供所需纸张，”俄勒冈州选举总监黛娜·道森说道。
甚至在重新印制选举邮寄信封之前，新设计就需要经过美国邮政总局分析师的审核和批准，选举官员表示，他们也没有时间完成这项工作。
据悉，美国邮政总局仅有约40名邮件设计分析师（简称MDA），而新规声称该机构预计不需要额外人员来实施该计划。考虑到不同地区的信封设计各不相同——密歇根州和威斯康星州等州拥有数百个独立的选举辖区——可能需要该机构审批数千种选票信封设计。
根据州选举总监的一份法庭声明，密歇根州至少有1521种不同的信封类型，由于缺少唯一条形码，其中一些需要重新设计。
美国邮政总局在其规则中称，分析师批准一项设计的平均时间为两天。但选举官员对这些保证表示怀疑，因为他们此前已经有过与美国邮政总局打交道的经验，更何况特朗普的计划会带来最后一刻全国范围内的审批激增。
“以佛蒙特州为例，该州有494种不同的选票样式和相应的选票信封样式，我们批准信封样式就花了大约3个月时间，”佛蒙特州务卿莎拉·科普兰·汉扎斯在一份法庭文件中说道，她指的是选举官员为简化邮寄选票递送而与美国邮政总局进行的常规工作。“完成所有这些工作后，美国邮政总局还要求修改247种信封样式。”
数据上传过程可能需要“数千小时”
特朗普计划中的第二项重大要求是，选举办公室必须上传将向其寄送选票的选民名单——由于在许多州，选民可以在选举前几周甚至几天内登记投票并申请邮寄选票，因此这份名单需要不断更新。
美国邮政总局为此搭建的未经测试的门户网站令人头疼，邮寄投票专家告诉CNN，关于上传流程如何运作仍存在基本问题。该机构的规则表明Excel将是可接受的格式，但在默认设置下，以零开头的数字会被去掉前导零——这可能引发错误。
科罗拉多州务卿办公室估计，数据录入过程将给全州选举工作人员增加“数万小时”的工作量，部分原因是该州的选民登记数据库目前并未记录为每位选民分配的信封条形码。这些数据将需要手动添加到门户网站中。
美国邮政总局要求各州选举负责人确定本州和地方办公室中哪些人员应该获得授权并接受门户网站访问培训——在一些州，这将涉及数十甚至数百人。
亚利桑那州务卿阿德里安·丰特斯还提出担忧，该门户网站无法处理该州最大辖区马里科帕县的批量上传数据，该县拥有超过250万选民。丰特斯在一份法庭声明中表示，该县曾在一个用于验证公民身份的独立联邦数据系统中上传选民名单，当时不得不安排在其他辖区不使用该系统的时段进行，以防系统崩溃。
他和其他选举官员都对混乱局面表示担忧——不仅是害怕被剥夺选举权的选民，还有美国邮政总局在实施过程中可能出现的混乱。
“我认为，在某些情况下，混乱就是他们的目的，”帕特里克说道。
Election officials say they can’t comply with Trump’s proposed mail ballot rules
2026-09-02T09:00:29.382Z / CNN
Trump administration efforts to force change in the handling of election ballots may be facing a bigger hurdle than the cross-country court challenges and resistance: Election officials insist it is simply too late for them to even try to comply with the proposed rules.
In court filings and interviews with CNN, election officials and other mail voting experts said that there is no practical way to comply with the Postal Service’s plans – even if states can find the millions of dollars they expect compliance to cost.
The administration has described the new postal rules as a “modest” change for states, but if states or local officials don’t meet the requirements for mail voting programs, the agency won’t deliver their ballots – risking mass disenfranchisement.
Vendors have told election officials there is not enough time to print the millions of envelopes that would need to be redesigned under the rule. It’s even possible that not enough paper stock exists to do so, according to court filings.
Getting local election administrators authorized and trained in a never-before-used portal the agency has set up for uploading states’ lists of mail voters would take thousands of hours of staff time.
“We’re weeks away from ballots going out and USPS still can’t answer basic questions about how this is going to work. Clearly they don’t even know,” Amanda Gonzalez, the clerk of Jefferson County, Colorado, which will send out 433,000 mail ballots, told CNN.
“These aren’t minor implementation details – they determine whether millions of eligible voters get their ballots,” said Gonzalez – who is running for Colorado secretary of state as a Democrat. “At this point, even when we prevail and it’s not implemented, the uncertainty being created by all of this is itself an election risk.”
That reality is why election officials and those who work with them have resisted panicking about the hypothetical consequences of the regulations, as they have been focused instead on the immediate confusion that has been caused for voters. In communications with the public, election officials have sought to convey clear message that the election will go on in November, and their ability to cast ballots – by mail or otherwise – will be protected.
A new USPS whistleblower report released Tuesday added additional uncertainty. It alleged that the agency had allotted just a few days to test a haphazardly built system for ingesting the voter information required by the plan. The risks of IT weaknesses in the system were exacerbated by the agency’s intention, according to the report, to reject entire batches of ballots – impacting the ballot access of potential tens of thousands of voters in some jurisdictions – if just one envelope in the batch did not match the information in the portal.
The mandates are currently on hold under a temporary federal court ruling that is being appealed by the administration. But the issue has traveled up to the Supreme Court once already – which gave the administration the greenlight to craft a final plan for the rules – and now that the final plan has been announced, it’s expected to reach the justices again.
“Most election officials – when they saw the Executive Order in March – they have had their head downs conducting their primaries, getting ready for the midterms,” said Tammy Patrick, the chief programs office for the National Association of Election Officials. When the final USPS plan was released last month, “many of them were shocked when they heard what was in the rule.”
The White House dismissed the election officials’ concerns, saying they should have been prepared given the proposal was rolled out “months ago.”
“Any confusion was caused by radical Democrats’ litigation to stop these commonsense measures that protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans are electing American leaders,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a statement.
A Postal Service spokesperson told CNN in a statement Tuesday the agency is “carefully reviewing” the concerns raised by the whistleblower.
“The United States Postal Service has spent months developing a U.S. Federal Ballot Mail Portal to provide election officials with a simple, secure, and efficient way to share lists of individuals receiving ballots by mail in their respective states. This work has at all times been conducted in a manner consistent with court orders,” the spokesperson said.
“Regardless of political party or perspective, we share a common goal: ensuring that Americans can have confidence that their election mail will be handled securely and delivered reliably,” the spokesperson said.
In court filings, USPS has defended the requirements, noting they are relying on the same laws that govern “special handling and conditions on acceptance for other types of materials that are similarly sensitive yet non-dangerous, raising unique operational concerns– such as cremated remains or replica explosives.”
Amid the legal whiplash, election officials are focused on carrying out the election while assuring voters that they should expect to vote by mail as they have already done. Election officials are anticipating a legal rollercoaster of Trump’s order being revived and blocked again, but because an election would have to happen this November, the practical hurdles to following the plan had become insurmountable.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar told CNN’s Dana Bash that the new whistleblower disclosures made him “nervous” and “very concerned,” but said that, as the court fight continued, he and other Democratic secretaries of state were “not going to relent in allowing this administration to dictate how to run elections.”
The Postal Service wants to require that both the “outbound” envelope carrying the ballot to the voter and the “inbound” envelope bringing the ballot back to the election office have a barcode for automated tracking that’s unique to each voter.
The unique barcodes are already present on “outbound” envelopes in many jurisdictions with heavy mail-in voting, but not as common on the return envelopes. And in rural areas where mail voting isn’t as popular, both sets of envelopes can lack the required bar codes, as is the case in more than a dozen counties in Pennsylvania, according to court filings.
The cost for reprinting the ballots could be in the millions of dollars for some states. Washington Elections Director Stuart Holmes said in court filings it would cost nearly $2 million, because more than 1 million envelopes would need to be replaced for counties there that don’t have the unique bar codes for inbound ballots.
When Holmes reached out last week to the three major vendors the state uses for mail ballots, none were able to confirm they could reprint the ballots in time – cost aside.
“It’s just not possible for us to meet the USPS requirement,” Holmes told CNN.
If the rule went into effect, jurisdictions across the country would be ordering reprints, further exacerbating the choke point, the Oregon state elections office said in a court filing.
“(Vendors) do not have a stockpile of paper, and post-pandemic paper supply shortages mean that paper suppliers may not be able to timely supply our vendors with the paper they need,” said Oregon Elections Director Dena Dawson.
Before the election mail envelopes could even be reprinted, new designs would need to be reviewed and approved by USPS analysts, and here too, election officials say there’s no time to get that done.
USPS is believed to have just 40 or so Mailpiece Design Analysts – known as MDAs – and the new regulation asserts that the agency does not expect to need additional staff to implement it. Given the envelope design can vary by locality to locality – and some states like Michigan and Wisconsin have hundreds of individual election jurisdictions – thousands of ballots envelop designs would likely need the agency’s approval.
At least some of the 1,521 different envelope types in Michigan would need to be redesigned because they lack the unique bar code, according to a court declaration from the state elections director.
USPS cited in its regulation an average two-day time for analysts to approve a design. But election officials are also skeptical of those assurances given their experience already with USPS approvals, before any last-minute nationwide surge requests for approvals that Trump’s plan would bring.
“For Vermont, with 494 different ballot styles and corresponding ballot envelope styles, the approval of our ballot envelope styles took approximately 3 months,” Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas said in a court filing, referring to the routine work election officials do with USPS to streamline mail ballot delivery. “After all of that work, the USPS has requested changes for 247 envelope styles.”
Data upload process could take ‘thousands of hours’
The second big requirement under Trump’s plan is a requirement that election offices upload lists of voters to whom they will be sending ballots – lists that will need to be continually updated because in many states, voters can register to vote and apply for mail ballots up until a few weeks, or even days, before the election.
The untested portal USPS has created for the job is causing heartburn, and mail voting experts noted to CNN here are still basic questions about how those upload process will work. The agency’s regulation suggested Excel would be an accepted format, but, under the default settings, numbers that begin with zeros see those zeros stripped – creating the potential for errors.
The Colorado secretary of state’s office estimates the data ingestion process will add “tens of thousands of hours” of work to election staff across the state, in part because its voter registration database doesn’t currently record the envelope bar codes assigned to each over. That data will need to be added manually to the portal.
USPS tasks state election chiefs with figuring out who in their state and local offices should be authorized and trained to access the portal – which in some states would amount to dozens or hundreds of people.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes additionally raised concerns that the portal would not be able to handle a bulk upload of his state’s biggest jurisdiction, Maricopa County, which has more than 2.5 million voters. When the county ran its voter lists through a separate federal data system used for verifying citizenship status, the upload had to be scheduled when no other jurisdiction was using the data system to prevent the system from crashing, Fontes said in a court declaration.
He and other election officials raised concerns of confusion – both from voters who fear disenfranchisement as well as within in USPS in its implementation.
“Confusion is, in some instances, I think the goal,” Patrick said.