1. United States
2. Wash.
3. Letter

On Wednesday, the FBI executed a search warrant at the Fulton County, Georgia Elections Operations Center and seized ballots and other materials from the 2020 presidential election. Federal agents removed boxes of ballots that had already been counted, recounted, audited, and litigated exhaustively. Georgia conducted two recounts, including a full hand count. Trump and his allies filed dozens of lawsuits across the country — and lost every one. The facts are settled. This is not about protecting voters or election integrity. The search warrant authorized agents to seize all physical ballots from the 2020 election, ballot images, voter rolls, and tabulator tapes. Legal experts have raised serious concerns about whether the cited statutes are applicable or even still enforceable. The greater danger may not be prosecution at all, but the political damage caused by the mere appearance of investigation. That danger is compounded by chain-of-custody of custody concerns. Democracy does not usually end all at once. It erodes when abuses of power are met with silence and delay. The time to act is now. The Constitution puts the running of elections squarely in state hands. Please do all you can to keep Washington elections fair and free of federal interference, be it seizure of past ballots, or federal agents at drop boxes to intimidate, or other nonsense.