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.
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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.
What changes are under way? Why are they happening now? And what lies inside the whistleblower complaint? We unpack that and more in this explainer.
What prompted these changes?
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.
Why spread election fraud claims?
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.
A study this year from the University of California, San Diego, found that voter confidence in the US had dropped by 17 percentage points over the last two years. It now sits at 60 percent, down from 77 percent in 2024.
How widely used are mail-in ballots?
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 some states, primarily in the western US, the vast majority of votes are cast through the mail.
According to 2024 estimates, some 99 percent of votes in Oregon were cast through the mail. Rates were similarly high in nearby states. The percentage was 98 in Washington state, 93 in Hawaii, 91 in Colorado, and 91 in Utah.
Critics point out that many states that rely on mail-in voting, like Oregon and Washington, traditionally lean Democratic.
Who prepares mail-in ballots?
Preparing the ballots, then sending and collecting them is a massive undertaking, with work often beginning several months before the actual election.
State and county officials design the ballots, which are specific to their jurisdictions. The ballots are then sent out through the Postal Service. Voters can return the ballots through the mail or through official election drop boxes.
To ensure a mail-in vote is valid, local election officials pour over the ballots, checking names and addresses against voter lists and matching signatures to their records.
What prompted the changes at the Postal Service?
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.
As part of the new system, states would be required to provide a list of eligible voters who intend to vote by mail.
Trump’s executive order says that the Postal Service “shall not transmit mail-in or absentee ballots from any individual unless those individuals have been enrolled” on a state-specific list.
What legal challenges has the order faced?
A lower court in Massachusetts blocked the March executive order, ruling that the Trump administration had overstepped its constitutional authority.
Under the Constitution, the administration of elections falls to the states, not the federal government.
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 legal battle, however, continues. After the Postal Service announced the restrictions to mail-in voting were in effect, 24 states filed a new lawsuit, as did a coalition of voting rights groups.
On August 27, the same judge in Massachusetts issued an order that the new rules not be implemented for 14 days while parties prepare a more detailed case.
Are Trump’s rules for mail-in ballots practical?
Aside from the question of whether Trump’s efforts are constitutional, there are also practical concerns about changing ballot procedures so close to an election.
Richer, the former election official, told Al Jazeera that he questions whether the Postal Service is prepared for the added responsibility of tracking ballots.
“USPS is going to be taking on this massive new burden of having to keep lists of every single mail voter in the US, and checking all ballot packets before sending them out,” Richer said. “There’s a real opportunity now for mistakes.”
What’s in the whistleblower complaint?
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 complaint alleges the Postal Service has struggled to set up a working software system in so short a time span.
The software is reportedly designed to match the barcodes on ballot envelopes to lists of eligible voters. Part of the problem, according to the whistleblower, is that the system will reject entire batches of ballots if a single barcode cannot be verified.
Those ballots are then sent back to the state, rather than being delivered to voters. The whistleblower noted that name or address changes could prompt ballots to be rejected.
The complaint also alleges that different parts of the new mail-in ballot system have been developed separately, and the limited testing done so far has shown these different systems do not work well together.
“Such sloppiness and haste seems clearly part of a purposeful attempt to create chaos and prevent people from voting,” Blumenthal said in an accompanying statement.
If the new rules are implemented, how could they impact elections?
Richer, the former election official, said the new rules could cause significant issues.
He explained that state voter rolls are not “a static list”, and they change as voters register or update their personal information.
“It’s not something like a list we have sitting around,” Richer said. “People are always making changes to addresses, or other information, or whether they want a mail-in ballot.”
In some states, voters are allowed to make changes as late as 15 days before an election. That, in turn, could create difficulties in a system that requires states to submit voting lists in advance to the Postal Service.
Richer also pointed out that these changes to mail-in voting are the same as vetting voter lists. They simply cross-reference who is scheduled to receive a mail-in ballot.
But many of Trump’s supporters seem to see the two processes as the same, according to Richer, which raises the possibility of future changes to ensure that happens.
