This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
It took the US government two years to roll out HealthCare.gov, nine months to pilot a direct tax-filing tool…and just 11 weeks to build a new system for processing Americans’ absentee ballots.
Before you cheer this rare instance of bureaucratic efficiency, however, please allow the other shoe to drop: That figure comes from an alarming new whistleblower report that foretells potential chaos in this fall’s midterm elections.
According to the whistleblower, the US Postal Service has rushed out a janky, error-prone processing system in its mad dash to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail-in ballots. That order, currently paused, would require states to comply with new rules for preparing, tracking, and mailing ballots. Several states have since sued to stop it.
If the order does go into effect, however, the Postal Service has to be prepared. So the agency scrambled to hack together its new system — forgoing standard testing procedures and adding requirements that are likely to hold up thousands of outbound ballots, the whistleblower says.
According to the report, multiple USPS officials have described the system as “a shit show” that, as of late August, was apt to “completely crash.” “Move fast and break things” is actually not a great look for governments.
Go a little deeper
But the issue goes far beyond one IT meltdown at the post office, or even many IT meltdowns at many post offices. As my colleague Ian Millhiser has covered in depth, Trump’s March executive order could effectively end mail-in voting in several states by imposing a slate of last-minute requirements that election officials don’t have time to implement.
Let’s just take the narrow issue of ballot envelopes. Trump’s executive order directed the post office to issue new rules about the design of those envelopes, which the post office did…on August 21.
The new rules required that ballot envelopes bear a unique barcode and a logo that the Trump administration claimed would “facilitate proper handling” of election mail. But by that point in the season, a number of states were already preparing to mail their midterm ballots.
North Carolina starts mailing general election ballots this week, for instance. More than a dozen other states post theirs by late September. And even in the unlikely case that these states could design, order and distribute millions of compliant envelopes in the next few weeks…it’s not clear the post office could process them.
Under the new system, the Postal Service must individually scan every outbound ballot as it heads to voters, a process that the Trump administration says will take “less than a minute” each. Across millions of ballots, however, “less than a minute” adds up: potentially to more than 380,000 hours, in California’s case.
That’s enormously concerning, Ian writes. Should courts allow Trump’s order to go into effect, the states that can’t comply won’t be able to do mail-in voting this year. And there are a number of states — including Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Colorado, Utah, and California — where the entire election is basically vote-by-mail.
“I think it is more likely than not that SCOTUS does not back Trump’s play here. But you can never rule anything out with this Supreme Court,” Ian said.
One link for later
➨ Listen to “your true self.” In one social science experiment, researchers found that participants who were asked to make an arbitrary decision based on their “true selves” — as opposed to their “rational” brains — were much happier with their choices in the end. So the next time you face a tough decision or a moment of personal ambiguity, you might also consider asking: “What would my true self do today?”
Before you go…
- Did you know…that Jennifer Lopez inspired Google’s image search feature? Former executives have said the company only prioritized the tool after JLo wore her famous green Versace dress to the Grammys in 2000.
- Today’s trivia: What flower did the Aztecs believe could attract the souls of the dead? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
- Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday we asked you for Tokyo’s original name. That would be Edo. The city was renamed in 1868 as part of a larger political transformation that turned Japan into a modern global power.
The post The plot to disrupt mail-in voting appeared first on Vox.
