There is a particular kind of contempt for democracy that does not bother to contest a court order and instead tries to evade it altogether. This past week, President Donald Trump and the United States Postal Service have proven they hold that contempt. Just two months ahead of the November midterms, a whistleblower has come forward to expose efforts made by USPS to secretly continue the development of a ballot-verification program that could block hundreds of thousands of ballots from being sent out. This program was explicitly judicially ordered to stop June 25 and then again Aug. 27. The stakes are not abstract — in Virginia alone, more than 259,000 absentee ballots were returned by mail in the last midterm election. The whistleblower report exposes more than a flawed system. It exposes a federal agency, empowered by President Trump, unafraid to attack democracy and judicial oversight.
The blueprint for this modern-day disenfranchisement began in the Oval Office — an irony lost on a President who continues to use mail-in ballots himself. In March, President Trump issued Executive Order 14399, directing the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to compile citizenship lists for use by USPS to determine who was eligible to receive a ballot. This change demonstrates a mass modern-day disenfranchisement movement that decides, silently, who has the opportunity to vote by mail. The order mandated new barcode requirements and envelope compliance, to be managed by the Federal Ballot Mail Portal. Over the following five months, a legal fight ensued in face of the election restrictions, ping-ponging back and forth. As the whistleblower describes, USPS continued developing the Portal in preparation to launch the system before the midterms, directly contradicting federal injunctions. The development currently stands blocked by an Aug. 27 restraining order.
The issue with this development manifests in two forms. Physically, the haste, inconsistency and secrecy with which the Portal was built is a threat to hundreds of thousands of votes in the midterm elections. As the whistleblower details, the Portal violated countless principles of error and debug testing — evaluations that seem absolutely imperative for a program impacting the suffrage of American citizens. If the Portal is unable to verify every voter in a state’s vote batch against its database, USPS would reject every other vote in that batch. Verification could be denied if, for example, a voter recently changed their name after marriage or because the system has had only a few weeks to compile a list of all eligible voters. A batch of 50,000 votes would have 49,999 verifiable votes rejected due to a single, possibly accidental, error. That number is deeply alarming, considering that in 2021, former Gov. Glenn Youngkin defeated Terrence McAuliffe by roughly 63,000 votes. One glitch, then, replicated across countless batches, would cost elections.
The other more fundamental concern lies with the constitutional basis of the initiative itself. Efforts to strengthen voter verification by President Trump serve a legitimate government and public interest — there is no contention that having insecure elections is a good government policy. However, the way the Trump administration has pursued that objective raises broader concerns about election administration and federal authority. Article I Section 4 of the Constitution explicitly assigns state legislatures primary responsibility for determining the voting details of congressional elections. Also detailed in that clause is the definite power of Congress — and only Congress — to override, make or alter those rules at any time. Notably absent from that constitutional allocation of power is the president or presidential executive orders. In no way does the Constitution confer upon the executive branch an authority to rewrite state election and verification rules. An executive order imposing new requirements, then, especially through a federal agency operating independently of state election authorities, explicitly reverses the principles of American democracy. It is not only a direct indictment of the Constitution, but also a reflection of the current administration’s thoughts on both the separation of powers and democracy as a whole.
Together, both the physical and legal issues regarding the Portal’s creation implicate principles far broader than the verification system itself. Mass disenfranchisement, federal interference in election administration and regulation and the erosion of constitutionally protected political participation should concern all citizens — regardless of political affiliation. This is a dispute over constitutional authority and over what happens when the limits constraining the executive branch are circumvented without consequence. The most concerning, tangible danger lies in the precedent set by the Portal’s use — a naturalized citizen, a newly married woman, a confused first-time voter, all rejected because of an error-ridden computer program and forced to bear the consequences of a system that they have no control over. Will they vote during the next election? Will they succumb to having their votes swallowed by the Portal and never counted?
Ultimately, an agency operating outside of and in direct contradiction to judicial oversight — in the weeks before an election, no less — is an attack on democracy itself, one this Editorial Board unequivocally denounces. Checks and balances are not a bureaucratic formality, they are the very mechanism that allows self-governance to function fluidly. For the Trump administration to furtively use USPS to continue developing the Portal in direct violation of not one but two court orders transforms voter verification into voter manipulation.
These concerns are not abstract, nor are the implications of rejected ballots limited to voters who may have recently changed their names. College students will feel the impact of changes to mail-in ballots, a system that many rely on while living away from their permanent home addresses. Moreover, there are myriad reasons why individuals use mail-in ballots — from accessibility concerns to the needs of active-duty soldiers. In preparation for that reality, it is important now more than ever to pay attention to changes in election rules and registration requirements and to have a clear plan for casting ballots. There is little that individual students can do when the executive branch tests constitutional authority. But refusing to remain indifferent when those boundaries are challenged is one way they can participate in the democratic process.
USPS’s job is to deliver the mail — not to decide who gets to receive it. The President’s job is to faithfully execute the law — not destroy democracy. From this entire debate, it has become clear that this administration is banking on both compliance and indifference from American citizens. It is imperative to reiterate, then, that mail-in voting is not a loophole to be closed entirely, but a lifeline of political participation for millions of American citizens. Voter confusion is a form of voter manipulation. And the American public will not sit silent and let a president who uses mail-in ballots quietly decide who else gets to use them.
The Cavalier Daily Editorial Board is composed of the Executive Editor, the Editor-in-Chief, the two Opinion Editors, the two Senior Associates and an Opinion Columnist. The board can be reached at eb@cavalierdaily.com.
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