“In other words, the fraud should not have affected the decision in the least.”
Not exactly. When the bureaucrats want to impose something, it lets them pretend there was a huge groundswell of opinion for or against it. This fraud matters.
I understand that the fraud matters in a political sense because of how the Democrats are treating it. The point is that notice/comment is not a popular vote, even though that is being implied by the media.
The GOP is doing a non-existent job of communicating that.