It does in fact make a difference when the law prosecutes some but not others. That is how kings and dictators rule, by enforcing 'the law' selectively and in secret.
I'll take this one further and add that selective timing of votes, polls, and application of law are all ways to 'rule by law' but game the system so that the rules have favoritism.
Take the recent Visa application process in the US. Let's pretend - and I'm not so sure we would be pretending - that the Visa process isn't 'random' but is prioritized for political purposes. This is one way that the appearance of fairness can be ridden for the pursuit of interests.
Even prioritizing police cases (parking tickets) to 'subjects of interest' or prior offenders is a skew of justice if these filters are correlated to any significant degree with political outcome or race/creed.
The US will poll citizens in other areas of the world until it is ascertained that the population would vote a certain way - at which point they will call for a vote to be held. This gives the outcome of a vote a sense of legitimacy to those just paying attention to the outcome of the vote - but those who can watch the process of repeated polling alongside influence operations understand just how fine an instrument this can be for deciding political outcomes.
This isn't to say any of this is 'wrong'. There's an undercurrent in the language - that's unfortunate. It's first enough to realize that these things are done and they are done sometimes explicitly with a purpose and other times by accident. Being aware is the first step to deliberation.
