The country has built a system in which Americans can have confidence. President Trump is trying to wreck it.
Page B1From§Eachthe late evening edition — 9 September 2026
Trump administration asks Supreme Court to expand mail-ballot system federal audit just confirmed mishandled ballots
As it ran on the front
In March, Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to build state-by-state lists of citizens eligible to vote. Those lists go to the states, the states hand them to the U.S. Postal Service, and the Postal Service screens mail ballots against them before they count. Lower courts blocked the order before it could run. On August 26, the Supreme Court lifted that block, ruling 6-3 that California and twenty-two other states lacked standing to challenge it — a ruling about who gets to ask, not about whether the system works.
It had three months to get built. On September 1, a warning arrived by way of a statement from Senator Richard Blumenthal: the Postal Service's new computer system was riddled with errors. Two days later, a second warning called the rollout untested and fatally flawed, headed for what it termed a catastrophic failure once it met the November midterms.…
…(cont) The Justice Department's response to two warnings inside a week arrived on September 4 — the same day North Carolina's election officials began mailing ballots under state law, opening the midterm voting period. DOJ asked the Supreme Court to step in and let the Postal Service's mail-ballot rules move forward.
That request is still on the Court's docket. This week, a federal audit answered a narrower question than the whistleblowers had raised — not whether the new system might fail, but what the Postal Service had already done with ballots. The finding: the Postal Service failed to properly handle some ballots during this year's primaries. That happened under the system as it exists right now, before the citizen-list screening the DOJ is asking the Court to switch on.
Election officials, the same week, are telling reporters they are running out of time waiting for a ruling on whether that screening can proceed at all. They are administering a live election under a rule the Supreme Court hasn't settled, run by an agency a whistleblower flagged as broken, checked by an audit that found ballots mishandled before the harder version even launched.
The Justice Department's ask is sitting in front of the Court right now: expand the system. The audit is sitting in front of the Court too. Both arrived the same week. The Court has not said which one it read first.
“They rushed the citizen-list machine together in three months, a whistleblower called it broken before Labor Day, and the answer wasn't to slow down — it was to ask the Supreme Court for the green light. Now the audit says ballots already got mishandled under the system they've got right now, and they're still asking for the version with the extra checkpoint bolted on. That's not an oversight, that's the ask.”
“This is exactly why you need a stronger list — an audit turns up mishandled primary ballots and people panic, but the Department's just asking the Court to let the safeguard finally switch on. Did I say the safeguard isn't built yet? Forget I said that, we're not talking about the whistleblower today.”
The receipts
The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a lower court’s injunction on President Trump’s executive order seeking to limit mail-in voting ahead of November’s midterm elections. Trump’s order directs the Department of Homeland Security to create state-by-state lists of eligible voters who are citizens. The U.S.
As they wait for word on whether the Trump administration’s new system to screen ballots can move forward, local officials say they are running out of time.
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department sought Wednesday to oppose Louisiana’s push to restrict abortion drugs by mail while refusing to defend the safety analysis behind the Biden-era rules, frustrating the appeals judges who pressed government lawyers to explain their position. The arguments before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of…
The post U.S. Postal Service Failed to Properly Handle Some Ballots During This Year’s Primary Elections, Audit Finds appeared first on ProPublica .
An anonymous federal whistleblower has warned that the Trump administration’s new system for handling mail ballots through the U.S. Postal Service is untested, fatally flawed and likely to lead to a “catastrophic failure” if it’s implemented ahead of November’s midterm elections.
· Whistleblower warns of potential Postal Service system failure for midterms from the morgue, 1 Sep 2026
· DOJ asks Supreme Court to allow Postal Service rules on mail ballots from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
· Rubber meets the road in mail-in ballot fight from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.