The FBI Raids Fulton

Why Election Rules Matter — Especially Now With the midterms underway, President Donald J. Trump is revisiting his claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Whether one agrees with that persistent contention or not, it is the reality we are living with. And that reality makes one thing abundantly clear: election workers — including volunteers — must follow election procedures to the letter.

But because process is protection. That brings us to Fulton County, Georgia.

What Actually Happened in Fulton County In 2023, Fulton County election officials acknowledged that approximately 315,000 ballot images from the 2020 election were missing a required poll-worker signature on accompanying audit documentation. These were not ballots themselves, and they were not unsigned voter ballots. The votes were lawfully cast, lawfully counted, and lawfully certified.

The missing signatures were on internal chain-of-custody and audit records — paperwork used to document that election workers properly handled and scanned ballots.

Georgia law requires that documentation be signed. Fulton County failed to do so consistently.

That failure was an administrative violation, not evidence of fraud. However, as we have seen, both parties are willing to jump on any inconsistency to try and overturn the election.

No court found that the missing signatures invalidated the votes. No judge ruled that the ballots were illegal. No evidence emerged that the outcome of any race was affected.

But here is the key point: those missing signatures created a crisis of confidence. Why Scale Matters

Some have pointed to the number 315,000 as proof that “every other ballot” might be fraudulent.

Fulton County has a population of just over one million people. In 2020, roughly 528,000 ballots were cast in the county. The 315,000 figure refers to audit records tied to ballot images — not votes lacking legal validity.

Still, the sheer size of the paperwork failure matters. Not because it proves wrongdoing, but because it undermines confidence.

In government, process is substance. If you fail to sign a required form when opening a business, the city can shut you down — even if everything else was done honestly. Election administration is no different.

That is precisely why rules exist. When documentation is sloppy, it provokes doubt about the integrity of elections and serves as fuel for people who are not acting in good faith.

This does not mean Fulton County officials committed fraud. It does not mean Georgia’s election results were illegitimate. It means that election administrators failed at a basic but essential task: dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.

And in an era where trust in institutions is already dangerously low, that failure has consequences.

Law Still Matters

Federal investigations do not happen on a whim. The FBI does not “raid” government offices without cause. Warrants require probable cause, affidavits, and judicial approval. If investigators violate those rules, cases fall apart under the long-established “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine. This doctrine basically states that if a warrant is obtained illegitimately, the case cannot move forward. If a police officer lies to a judge to get a search warrant, anything found in the search can be thrown out under this principle.

That principle exists to protect everyone — including election officials.

But the best protection is not legal technicalities after the fact. It is competence and compliance before problems arise.

Corruption does not belong to a political party. Neither does carelessness. And both have a way of destroying public trust far faster than truth can rebuild it. Virtually every presidential election of this century has been called into question by procedural flaws, real or imagined. Whether this be chads in Florida, mail in ballots, or missing signatures.

In a time when political power is openly used as a weapon, the only safe course is to do the job exactly right — every time — so that no one can credibly claim otherwise. Furthermore, experience has shown that whatever any politician or official is willing to admit to, worse things were done and this admission usually only comes after being caught.

In the end, corruption has no political allegiance, and we cannot forget that. Remember also that both the elephant and the donkey will let you down, but The Lamb will not.