Alan Zendell, September 2, 2026

If there is one sure way to undermine a democratic republic it is to rig elections. We mocked fake elections in other countries for decades. Does anyone take elections in Russia seriously? In 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has served as either president or prime minister since 2000 won re-election with 88% of the vote. In the opinion of virtually every international watchdog organization, the Russian election system is merely a front for autocracy, as Russia imprisons or kills Putin’s political rivals and outlaws dissenting opinions.

If Donald Trump is allowed to decide who can vote in American elections and who cannot in 2026 or 2028, that is precisely to path we will be going down. Trump has already shown no restraint in going after political rivals simply because they disagree with him. He routinely threatens imprisonment or death to people like Nancy Pelosi, James Comey, and John Bolton, and use the Justic Department as his personal legal attack dog. Moreover, Trump has demonstrated conclusively that the threats he makes, while often irrational and over the top, are to be taken seriously. They’re not just political machinations, but intents to seriously harm his opponents.

In spite of consistent findings by state election officials and independent audits that there is virtually no fraud connected to voting my mail, and that errors identified are trivial in number, Trump continues to push his narrative that mail-in voting must be curtailed according to rules that benefit his MAGA movement. In the 2024 election won by Trump, nearly a third (30.3%) of votes were cast by mail, with a number of states (Oregon, Washington, Utah, and Colorado) topping 90% of votes cast by mail. The percentages are also very high in Hawaii, California, and Nevada.

Trump wants us to believe that since six of those seven states are blue, they must be rigging elections against him, which aligns perfectly with his oft-voiced narcissistic notion that he couldn’t possibly lose a fair election because he is so beloved. Polls consistently show, however, that Americans have soured on Trump, with his approval rating dropping to the low thirties, and as Americans become more aware of the negative consequences of his failed war with Iran and his wrong-headed trade wars, the decline in his popularity continues weekly. A man as desperate for power and adulation as Trump knows only one way to react to that: lie, cheat, and steal.

Last March, Trump ordered the US Postal Service to screen all requests by states to mail ballots to voters against flawed and incomplete government citizenship records. That aside, the requirement would have required development of a massive, complex new IT system. USPS began that development in June, and last week a federal judge put the effort on hold, although there is no indication that USPS is abiding by that order. It’s worth noting, too, that the Constitution bestows full authority over elections to the states, and the role of the postal service is only to deliver the mail, not to decide who gets to receive things mailed to them.

And now we have a whistle blower report from within USPS that the whole process “is a shit show” likely to result in catastrophic failure that could disenfranchise millions of American voters. The report describes the system as rushed, incomplete, and untested and predicts that it will result in a disastrously flawed election result. I don’t know who the whistle blower is or how credible they are, but after thirty-seven years of government employment and many more as a government contractor, I can attest to the likelihood that the whistle blower report is valid.

For one thing, any IT professional worth their salt knows that a project this complex cannot be rushed. The IT industry has well-documented standards and procedures for such massive undetrtakings, and every project I was connected with over roughly fifty years followed them. They require an orderly progression of planning, testing, and approval steps, without which failure is a near certainty.

I can also attest to the risks a potential government whistle blower takes when they publicly stand against their agency. It’s not something anyone does lightly, and it’s not something done by cranks. Whistle blowers are often the last line of defense against disaster, as Daniel Elsberg proved when he released the Pentagon Papers that showed three administrations had been lying to Americans about the Vietnam conflict. We all know how that ended.

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D, CN) has written to USPS Director David Steiner demanding a response to the whistle blower’s report, and election officials in several states have declared that even if the USPS system worked and was found to be constitutional, it is too late in the election process to implement its requirements. Let us hope that the Supreme Court will recognize what a disaster Trump’s order to USPS actually is, and how badly it can damage our entire election process. If this “shit show” is allowed to move forward, it will give Trump what he needs to do what he really wants to: declare a national emergency that authorizes him to take control of the election away from the states. If that happens we can say goodbye to our republic.