According to a new whistleblower report published on Tuesday by a Democratic senator, the US Postal Service's attempt to create a comprehensive new system for certifying postal votes has sparked a number of IT issues among agency staff, with some calling the process an internal "sh*t show."

According to the anonymous whistleblower, several of the procedures that USPS is preparing in accordance with President Donald Trump's directives have been kept secret from the public. According to the whistleblower, those procedures will make an already hazardous and complex strategy further more susceptible to possible widespread disenfranchisement.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut presented the new study, which was put together by the whistleblowers' attorneys, as many courts are debating whether the idea, which would mandate that states provide USPS with lists of their mail-in voters, is lawful. If there are any differences between the voter data in the USPS system and what the agency scanners pick up on the ballot envelopes, the agency will not distribute ballots for states.

According to the report, "USPS leadership appears to have discarded all best practices as they speed up the project to be ready for a September 1 implementation, raising questions about whether catastrophic failure would be a feature rather than a bug."

USPS has been contacted by CNN for comment.

In March, Trump issued an executive order granting the USPS a hitherto unheard-of role in vetting state mail ballot initiatives. Election authorities have previously voiced serious reservations about using a system that hasn't undergone rigorous testing and training.

The whistleblower claimed that because of the electoral calendar's time constraints, USPS' IT teams would have less than a week to test the system when it was completed. North Carolina will start shipping ballots this week, and other states will follow later this month.

According to the whistleblower claim, it's unclear if the portal is prepared for its intended Tuesday launch. Last week, a judge suspended the requirement that states use the system in order for USPS to distribute their ballots. However, the judge stated that USPS could continue to provide the portal to states that voluntarily wish to upload voter data by mail. That decision is being appealed by the Justice Department.

The process of haphazard development and testing

The whistleblower claims in the report that several workers used the term "sh*t show" to characterize the process during the last week of testing, and it lists more instances of USPS rushing through the system's development. The whistleblower claims that the plans the IT team was presented for the system were "constantly changing" from the start and that the development staff was not given clear written documentation of the system's requirements.

According to the report, USPS leadership dismissed concerns and "insisted that it was easy to understand what was needed and also that there was no time to write down the requirements."

The report details a disorganized attempt to test the system's components as they were ready. Only four days would be given for the system to go through a stage of development where prospective users may test it out, according to the plan outlined to meet the September 1 deadline.

"Four days of user testing is completely unreasonable for a system that manages something as important as handling voting and ballots," the whistleblower report stated.

Procedures for verification that are error-free

Because USPS may reject entire batches of ballots if there are any discrepancies between the voter lists that election officials have submitted and the ballots they are trying to send, tens of thousands of ballots could go unsent at a time until the discrepancy is fixed, raising serious concerns about the system's untested nature.

The first step of verification, according to the whistleblower, would compare the voter data on the portal with the "manifests" that election officials are required to submit for each batch of ballots they plan to drop off. This method is not outlined in the public laws. According to the article, before election officials are permitted to drop off the ballots, the information on the manifests—including the unique bar codes that election officials are required by law to provide each voter—must precisely match the information in the portal.

The whistleblower claims that depending on where the ballots are being left, either the full batch of ballot envelopes or a sample will be physically scanned when election officials deliver them to their USPS location. USPS will not deliver the full batch of ballots while the difference is being resolved if even one ballot envelope scan does not match the data in the gateway.

"The procedure is completely harsh as intended. According to the research, "it could prevent states from mailing enormous numbers of ballots by delaying ballots by the thousands in repeated verification cycles."