Unpacking the US Vote-by-Mail Controversy: Legal Battles and Whistleblower Allegations Ahead of Midterms

Voters across the United States are set to take part in midterm elections on November 3. But with two months left until polling day, a major legal battle is taking place that could throw the entire process into chaos. Acting on election fraud concerns raised by President Donald Trump, the US Postal Service (USPS) is scrambling to take steps purportedly to ensure the security of mail-in ballots. Roughly 48 million US voters cast their ballots through the mail, as of 2024.

Critics have warned that restricting the process could disenfranchise groups who rely on mail-in voting ahead of the critical midterm vote. In late August, however, the Supreme Court granted an emergency request to allow the Trump administration to proceed with its reforms. That has injected uncertainty into the last-minute election preparations, with early voting slated to begin in some states as early as September. On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal made public a whistleblower complaint he received detailing problems with the Postal Service’s plans to restrict mail-in voting.

“Their system is set up to fail – and risk the right to vote for millions of Americans who cast their ballots by mail,” Blumenthal said in a statement.

Trump has long claimed, without proof, that his opposition, the Democratic Party, is involved in rigging elections. To justify that statement, he has made two intertwined but unsubstantiated allegations. First, he maintains that Democratic-led states are allowing non-citizens to vote. Second, he argues that states are not doing enough to secure the millions of mail-in ballots sent out each election season. But experts and election officials have cast doubt on those assertions.

“There’s a mythology that mass-mail ballots are being mailed to nobody by election offices, just phantom people being mailed ballots,” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican election official who now serves as a fellow at the Cato Institute think tank and a lecturer at Harvard University. Election fraud is incredibly rare, and experts say the few documented instances have not swayed election outcomes.

Critics have argued that raising concerns about election fraud is a tactic to undermine faith in US democracy. That, in turn, can lead to poor voter turnout. Misinformation can also sow public confusion, allowing election results to be more easily manipulated by bad actors. Politicians have also cited such claims to push forward voting restrictions, which critics say could limit who has access to the elections.

About 30 percent of people who voted in the 2024 elections sent their ballots through the mail, according to the Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan government commission. This is a slight decrease from 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 43 percent of votes were cast through the mail that year, as many voters chose to avoid polling stations out of concern for their health.

In March, Trump issued an executive order ostensibly aimed at ensuring the integrity of federal elections. It directed the Postal Service to propose new rules, reforming the design of mail-in ballots to include identifying barcodes that the federal government could scan and track. A lower court in Massachusetts blocked the March executive order, ruling that the Trump administration had overstepped its constitutional authority. But last month, the Supreme Court temporarily cleared the way for the Trump administration to enact the changes by lifting the lower court’s injunction.

The whistleblower complaint obtained by Senator Blumenthal alleges that Trump’s executive order has created chaos in the Postal Service, as it seeks to implement the new rules before Election Day. According to the whistleblower, the Postal Service had aimed to launch an online portal this week for state election officials to identify ballots they intended to mail to voters, but the system has faced significant technological hurdles and testing failures.