Rushed Federal Mail Ballot System Could Block Ballots for Millions of Voters This Fall

Atlanta, GA — The Chamberlain Network is alarmed by a whistleblower disclosure revealing that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) continued building a new federal mail-ballot screening system despite court orders restricting its implementation—and that the rushed, insufficiently tested system could prevent large numbers of eligible voters from receiving their ballots this fall.

The portal uses a zero-error verification standard so unforgiving that a single unreadable barcode in a batch of 10,000 ballots could cause the entire batch to be rejected. USPS had been pushing toward a September 1 launch despite what the whistleblower described as a rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed development process.

“A voter could never receive the ballot they requested,” said Chris Purdy, CEO and Founder of The Chamberlain Network. “The portal introduces a new point of failure between election officials and voters, mere weeks before a national election.”

A federal judge had previously issued a temporary restraining order directing USPS to take “no further preparatory steps or implement in any way” the proposed portal. The judge further required that USPS personnel be notified that compliance was mandatory “under penalty of contempt.”

Military and overseas ballots are exempt from the proposed new system. But the voters who stand to lose the most are those who are not exempt: elderly voters; voters with disabilities, including disabled veterans; rural Americans who live hours from a polling place, including Native voters in remote communities; students voting away from home; caregivers; shift workers; and voters dealing with illness or displacement.

States are already beginning the early voting process. In North Carolina, for example, mail ballots are required by law to go out by September 4, making the state the first real-world test of a portal that election officials say they have received virtually no information about—with no time left to fix what goes wrong.

Every eligible voter should be able to cast a ballot, every lawful vote should be counted, and election outcomes should reflect the will of the voters. A system built this close to an election, under an order the Constitution never gave USPS the authority to carry out, does not meet that standard.

The Chamberlain Network calls on USPS to halt the portal’s launch and on Congress to demand full transparency from Postmaster General David Steiner about why USPS agreed to build this system at all.

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The Chamberlain Network mobilizes and empowers veterans to work within their communities to uphold free and fair elections and cultivate a respectful civic society that supports healthy democratic institutions. Through leadership training, issue education, and support for locally driven initiatives, the organization equips veterans to take meaningful action that rebuilds trust in our democracy.https://www.chamberlainnetwork.us/