What If The Mail Just Doesn’t Get There?

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan “Raisin’” Caine says the military has “no plans” to have soldiers go to polling stations.

“I have neither received not anticipate receiving any unlawful order concerning the role of the Joint Force in the upcoming November 2026 midterm elections,” General Caine wrote.

That’s good news, particularly that he characterized it as an “unlawful order,” but isn’t quite the same as saying he would never do so even if ordered. After all, one could never anticipate what Trump or Hegseth might order.

Similarly, Second Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin didn’t say he would send Trump’s army of ICE agents to the polls, but offered up advance excuses for why they might end up there anyway.

Markwayne Mullin: “The only reason we’d be at polling places is if there’s a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant” pic.twitter.com/HRIJXzyxWO

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 1, 2026

Even though Attorney General Todd Blanche can’t grasp why this might be a problem, most of us see the obvious problem of intimidation and random seizures of voters for having a swarthy appearance and a hint of a Spanish accent.

But there’s an alternative to taking the risk of being one of those citizens “mistakenly” deported to Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Liberia, Rwanda or Sierra Leone. Vote by mail, right? After all, Judge Indira Talwani has issued a preliminary injunction against the United States Postal Service refusing to deliver ballots, so problem solved? Not quite.

A U.S. Postal Service official has alleged that the agency is moving forward with a “secretive, rushed” effort to carry out President Trump’s order exerting federal control over mail voting, despite a court order blocking those plans.

The official filed a whistle-blower report, published on Tuesday morning by the office of Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, asserting that the “risky and haphazard” implementation of Mr. Trump’s order could lead to a “catastrophic failure” in the mail ballot system ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The report said that the agency had planned to complete a new digital system overseeing mail ballots by Sept. 1.

If the postal service imposes the rules dictated by Trump’s EO, the consequences could be a disaster for tens of millions of American citizens. The postal service has taken the position that the injunctions may have blocked the implementation of the new rules, but not the work on the system should the injunction be lifted.

The Postal Service confirmed in a statement that it had continued work on the portal amid the legal battle, but asserted that it was in compliance with the courts because it was not currently using parts of the new system that could invalidate people’s votes.

The “rushed” system has the potential to wreak havoc with batches of mail-in ballots, as one defective bar code, due to a name change following marriage or someone moving, could result in an entire batch of thousands of ballots being rejected. Should there be a crack in the injunction, say a stay pending appeal, the USPS could immediately implement its system, and ballots in the postal system could “disappear.”

But even if the injunction remains in effect, the postmaster general could still please his liege by having mail-in ballots “slow-walked” through the postal system. Between delivering ballots to voters too late to vote and delivering the returned ballots too late to be counted, all the while theoretically complying with the order not to implement the rules crafted to effectuate Trump’s demands, the United States Postal Service could produce a similar result of making mail-in voting untenable. After all, the timing of receiving and delivering ballots is contingent on the postal service respecting the sanctity of mail and providing the timely service expected.

In the meantime, DHS has initiated “overt” investigations into voter fraud in Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York and Connecticut, sending Homeland Security Investigators into the field despite there being no evidence of voter fraud to investigate.

Starting Tuesday, HSI is launching a “coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative to pursue investigative leads, conduct field interviews, and support timely prosecutorial review,” the guidance says.

On the one hand, these flagrant efforts to interfere with American citizens exercising their franchise might serve to make people want to vote more and vote against the party trying to intimidate them into not voting. On the other hand, there will be voters who just don’t care enough to take the risk of ending up in an immigration detention facility or the Central African Republic. Either way, these efforts stand to produce a nightmare on Election Day, feeding claims of voter fraud and voter intimidation and interference, both of which undermine the public perception that the United States is capable of holding free and fair elections.