A whistleblower has emerged within the U.S. administration over attempts by U.S. President Donald Trump to push for mail-in voting restrictions ahead of the November midterm elections.

The whistleblower warns that the rushed implementation of these measures risks disenfranchising numerous voters, sparking a major controversy.

The federal employee, belonging to the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) which is enforcing the mail-in voting restrictions, prepared a report exposing internal USPS conditions with the assistance of Whistleblower Aid, a private organization supporting whistleblowers. The report was made public on the 1st local time by Democratic U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

Under an executive order on mail-in voting restrictions signed by President Trump in March, the USPS announced new related rules on the 21st of last month.

The rules stipulate that in order for state governments to send out mail-in ballots, envelope designs containing a trackable barcode must be approved by the federal government, and state election authorities must submit voter registration lists containing eligible voters to the USPS.

The USPS plans to withhold delivery of ballots if the voter information registered in its own system does not match the information verified when scanning the ballot envelopes.

The whistleblower claimed that the proprietary system built to enforce these rules was pushed through hastily.

While such information technology systems typically take about a year to develop, the whistleblower stated that development was forced to be completed in just three months, with a mere four days allocated for system verification and error correction.

The whistleblower specifically argued that the system was designed around a zero-error rate standard, creating a high risk of voters being disenfranchised.

For example, if even a single instance of information mismatch occurs among a batch of 10,000 mail-in ballots submitted by state election authorities, the delivery of the entire batch of 10,000 would be rejected, potentially leading to a situation where large-scale delivery delays and cancellations prevent voters from casting mail-in ballots.

The whistleblower also claimed that the new USPS rules were developed in secret while lawsuits were being filed in federal courts across the United States.

Furthermore, the whistleblower disclosed that the rules were violated even after Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts issued an order on the 27th of last month temporarily halting the enforcement of the USPS rules.

With the emergence of this whistleblower, political debates and partisan clashes in the U.S. over mail-in voting are expected to intensify further, with the midterm elections about two months away.

President Trump has attempted to restrict mail-in voting, suspecting that his defeat in the 2020 presidential election was due to widespread fraud by the opposition Democratic Party utilizing mail-in ballots.

However, the Democratic Party maintains that there is no evidence of widespread fraud in mail-in voting and is fighting these attempts with lawsuits.

Previously, in a ruling on the 24th of last month regarding a lawsuit seeking to halt the implementation of President Trump's executive order, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned lower court decisions and sided with the Trump administration.

The court had judged that the lawsuit, filed before the USPS rules were released, was premature.

However, after the USPS rules were unveiled, 24 states controlled by Democrats and Washington, D.C. filed a new lawsuit, and Judge Talwani issued an order suspending the enforcement of policies including a provision prohibiting the USPS from delivering mail-in ballots to voters not listed on rosters compiled by federal agencies.

(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)