Part of the Series
Voting Wrongs
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When the FBI raided a Fulton County, Georgia, elections hub on January 28, it removed some 700 boxes of records from the 2020 election, including all physical ballots. My ballot was among them.
I’ve been a Fulton County voter for 18 years. Over the last five years, I’ve witnessed Donald Trump weaponize his 2020 presidential election defeat against Georgia voters, especially Fulton County voters, despite winning the 2024 election.
Unless a judge can force the return of the ballots, and Georgia Republican state leaders fight to protect our votes, this latest catastrophe will dampen voter confidence, depress turnout, and imperil future election outcomes.
Fulton County is the most populous and one of the bluest counties in Georgia. Over half a million registered voters cast their ballots in the 2024 election. Just under 72 percent of Fulton County votes went to Kamala Harris, while 27 percent went to Trump. (Trump’s 2024 performance slightly improved from 2020.)
Fulton County’s majority-Democratic votes, in addition to the votes from other Democratically leaning metro Atlanta counties, are a big reason why Georgia remains a battleground state. A threat to Fulton County votes is a threat to Georgia’s voters’ right and ability to elect their chosen candidates.
Moreover, neither Gov. Brian Kemp nor Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger seem interested in challenging Trump. Raffensperger, who went against his GOP colleagues by repeatedly confirming the 2020 result’s accuracy, is now running for governor. He’s probably far more concerned about winning the votes of Republican voters than the recent confiscation of ballots.
Other Trump loyalists in Georgia — including two who are challenging Jon Ossoff for his Senate seat, Representatives Mike Collins and Buddy Carter — are celebrating the raid. Though Fulton County election officials have asked a court to force the return of the ballots, meaningful recourse is unlikely.
Add to this Georgia’s long, torrid history of rampant voter suppression, which accelerated after the Supreme Court issued its 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, gutting Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This meant the state no longer needed to get approval from the Department of Justice to enact discriminatory laws and policies. Since Shelby, under the leadership of then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp (who was elected governor in 2018), the state intensified massive voter purges and erected a slew of barriers to voting. Nevertheless, 2020 was the first year since Bill Clinton’s 1992 win that a Democratic presidential candidate won the state’s electoral college votes. The race was a nail-biter. The margin between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was less than 12,000 votes.
Trump’s 2020 defeat spurred a slew of lawsuits, followed by his infamous call to Raffensperger demanding that he “find” a way to hand him the election outcome. Trump then falsely accused Fulton County election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss of election fraud, and incited a mob to terrorize them on the same day as the January 6 insurrection. He also pressured Georgia Republicans to pass SB 202 in 2022, a new, more rigorous voter suppression law, and to kick Raffensperger off the State Election Board, the body that enacts rules and policies to carry out elections in Georgia. The board, which consists of a majority of Trump loyalists, has, among other things, established rules to delay the certification of election results, and threatened to take over Fulton County elections entirely.
As if this most recent assault on democracy wasn’t bad enough, Trump sent Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who’s tasked with monitoring foreign threats to U.S. security, to accompany the FBI’s purely domestic operation in Fulton County. Gabbard’s involvement is a red flag for what the current administration may allege about our elections here.
Voter turnout is based on myriad factors, and one of these factors is voter confidence — a voter’s belief that their ballot is secure and correctly tabulated for their chosen candidates. A 2025 analysis by States United, a nonpartisan organization, found that voters with a high level of confidence have a higher likelihood of voting. It also found that if all voters had a high level of confidence during the 2024 election, turnout would have increased by 3 to 3.7 percent. The report’s conclusion is chilling: The authors write that “between 4.7 and 5.7 million Americans didn’t vote who might otherwise have done so had they felt more positively about American elections.” A voter’s political party significantly impacted voter confidence after the 2024 election. Republicans had higher voter confidence than Democrats. Unsurprisingly, Republican voters are confident in their vote when their own candidate wins.
The FBI raid in Fulton County goes far beyond an issue of voter confidence, though. This was an unprecedented, vengeful power-grab by a far right government, and is a catastrophic threat to the integrity of upcoming elections in Georgia. If, five and a half years later, Trump persists in claiming that the county rigged its 2020 election results, what’s next?
The picture has already become clearer. Just days after the FBI’s seizure of election data, Trump announced a goal to “nationalize” elections, and instructed his sycophants to take over the elections of 15 as-of-yet unspecified “places.” Fulton County is likely one of them. During the next election cycle, will the FBI snatch and manipulate ballots before the election results are even tallied? Will Gabbard claim foreign election interference and push to nullify the votes? In such an oppressive election climate, Fulton County voters may never feel safe or secure casting their ballots again.
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