Op-ed: The Right to Vote Is on Trial at the Supreme Court

by Tom Lopach

Once again, America must confront a fundamental question: Will we protect the right to vote for every American, or allow the Voting Rights Act to be weakened beyond recognition?

This week, the Supreme Court revisited that question in Louisiana v. Callais; a case that could gut the Voting Rights Act and make it harder for millions of Americans to be fairly represented.

Every election cycle, we see how fragile access to the ballot can be. Voter Participation Center research from 2024 shows that participation among underrepresented voters is slipping—not because they’ve stopped caring, but because states keep putting up new barriers to vote.

In 2022, voter turnout among people of color, young people, and unmarried women trailed older white voters by 22%. This gap persisted in 2024 when Black voter turnout fell by nearly 240,000 votes. Unmarried women cast 723,000 fewer votes than in 2020. Together, these groups and young voters cast over one million fewer ballots even as turnout among other voters rose by nearly 800,000.

These citizens are not apathetic. They are teachers, caregivers, students, and first-time voters running into obstacles that make participating increasingly difficult: registration systems that don’t keep up when they move, deadlines that conflict with work or family schedules, polling places that are under-resourced or inaccessible, and districts drawn to dilute their voices. Each barrier sends the same message that voting is for some, not for all.

Now the Supreme Court is weighing whether to remove one of the few tools left to fight those barriers.

Tom Lopach is President and CEO of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Voter Participation Center (VPC) and the Center for Voter Information (CVI). VPC and CVI use data-driven methods of direct mail and digital engagement to register to vote and turn out to vote underrepresented voters, with the goal of helping to ensure a representative electorate in US elections.