Election officials warn USPS mail ballot rules could cause 'mass disenfranchisement'

A federal rule published by the U.S. Postal Service on August 21 is forcing election officials across the country into an impossible bind: implement sweeping new requirements for mail ballots in a matter of weeks, or watch millions of voters potentially lose access to absentee voting just before the November elections.

The rule demands that states include voter-specific barcodes on ballot envelopes, submit detailed voter information to a new federal online portal, and allow postal workers to verify and reject any mailings that don't comply. The Trump administration has characterized these as modest informational requirements that should not prevent anyone from voting by mail. But election officials in two dozen states and the District of Columbia, now fighting the rule in federal court, paint a starkly different picture: a logistical catastrophe that cannot be executed in time without causing what one voting rights attorney calls "mass disenfranchisement and ballot delays."

The timeline alone reveals the crisis. Mail ballots are already going out to voters in several states this month—Wisconsin clerks have already sent some, since state law permits it once primary results are certified. By mid-September, most states will begin mailing ballots to millions of voters. The Postal Service's new portal enrollment deadline is September 17 in Wisconsin. Yet election officials say they lack the technical infrastructure, trained personnel, and even basic supplies to meet these demands.

Consider the arithmetic of impossibility. A California official calculated that if every registered voter in the state—23 million people—cast a mail ballot, and postal workers scanned each barcode at the Postal Service's estimated rate of less than one minute per ballot, the verification process alone would require 43 years. In New York, adding voters to the federal portal would demand more than 10 years of cumulative work by state and local employees. Minnesota's elections director estimates his staff will need 8,500 hours just to become authorized users and enroll voters. New York's co-executive director calculated an additional 20,000 hours of work across the state's 58 local election boards—the equivalent of 533 work weeks.

The practical obstacles compound the time crunch. Colorado has already printed 1.3 million ballot return envelopes that lack the required individualized barcodes and must now be scrapped. Hawaii faces the same problem with 79,000 envelopes already ordered and paid for. Washington state, which conducts elections entirely by mail and expects to send ballots to 5.1 million voters, estimates reprinting compliant envelopes would cost $1.9 million—money most counties don't have. Two of Washington's three ballot vendors have said they cannot reprint envelopes by the deadline; one indicated it has no capacity to print new ones at all. Oregon faces paper shortages that may prevent vendors from obtaining supplies in time. Massachusetts would need to purchase new computer software for 351 municipalities to generate and apply the required barcodes, a cost that could deplete budgets in smaller towns.

The barcode requirement itself reveals how the rule collides with the decentralized reality of American elections. Fourteen of Colorado's 64 counties don't currently use the Postal Service's required barcodes, and most don't include them on return envelopes. These are typically rural counties with fewer than 10,000 registered voters, administered by a single person who manually prints and stuffs ballots. They have no infrastructure to comply. In Maryland, roughly 72,000 voters receive ballots via secure email link and return them by mail with hand-addressed envelopes—envelopes that cannot accommodate unique barcodes, and for which the state has identified no technical solution. As Maryland's assistant deputy administrator for election policy put it, the rule "potentially disenfranchises all mail-in voters who are signed up to receive mail-in ballots via secure email link."

Wisconsin's Republican election commission chair, Don Millis, offered a blunt assessment of the portal enrollment requirement. Wisconsin's 1,850 municipal clerks administer elections, and more than 2,500 employees can modify voter records. All of them would need training, portal access, and time to enter voter data before September 17. "It's not feasible given the decentralized nature of this," Millis said. He added a note of frustration: "I think it's good to do what you can to prevent noncitizens from voting, but I think many people at the national level have this incorrect view of mail-in ballots. It's not the first time that Republicans at the national level have shot themselves in the foot."

A federal judge in Boston, Indira Talwani, has temporarily blocked key aspects of the rule for the November elections. But the states are seeking longer-term relief, and the outcome remains uncertain. Meanwhile, a Postal Service whistleblower has warned Congress that the new mail ballot portal is untested and its development rushed, raising concerns that the verification process could prevent significant numbers of ballots from being delivered. The question now is whether the courts will intervene before the rule takes effect and election officials are forced to choose between compliance and their ability to conduct elections.