The experts were wrong

In April 2021, a coalition of “nonpartisan” civic engagement groups led by VoteAmerica, the Voter Participation Center, and the Campaign Legal Center sued the state of Georgia seeking to block the enactment of S.B. 202, the state’s election integrity bill. In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged many things. They claimed that the bill’s goal was “not to improve electoral administration but to suppress turnout.” They claimed the bill created a “disparate impact on minority communities and substantial and unnecessary burdens on the right of all Georgians to vote,” and that it had “intentional discriminatory motivation.” 

In press releases about the lawsuit, the groups went even further. Voter Participation Center CEO Tom Lopach said, “Provisions in S.B. 202 would make it more difficult to vote, especially for the New American Majority—people of color, young people and unmarried women,” while Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at Campaign Legal Center, said, “S.B. 202’s effort to restrict civic engagement groups ultimately punishes voters, who otherwise might not be able to make their voice heard in our democracy.”  

Outside the courtroom, the groups led a feverish opposition and public-pressure campaign, seemingly against the entire state of Georgia. The CEOs of Atlanta-based Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola denounced the bill. More than 100 companies, including Amazon, Ford, and Starbucks signed a letter responding to unspecified legislation they claimed restricted voting rights. Apple and Will Smith moved the production of a movie out of Georgia. Even the 2021 MLB All-Star Game was moved from Atlanta to Colorado because Major League Baseball claimed the legislation “disproportionately disenfranchises the Black community.” 

There was a full court press against the bill, but it failed and S.B. 202 was enforced with only minor injunctions during the 2024 election. All was lost, and democracy was doomed in Georgia. Right? 

Not so much. 

Much ado about nothing 

The Voter Participation Center and its allies lost their lawsuit in September 2025, Atlanta was awarded the 2025 MLB All-Star Game to replace the one the city lost in 2021, and the apocalyptic forecasts of all the “democracy experts” and “voting rights advocates” turned out to be as accurate as Al Gore’s weather forecasts. A record-setting 5.29 million people turned out to vote in Georgia during the 2024 election, which was about 64 percent of all registered voters. Not only did overall participation set records, but the law, then-President Joe Biden and others dubbed “Jim Crow 2.0,” coincided with increased turnout from “underrepresented” communities in Georgia while decreasing turnout among older white people. 

The Voter Participation Center’s (VPC’s) own research confirms it. 

In September 2025, the VPC published the results of research they commissioned on “Voter Participation Among Underrepresented Communities in 2024.” The research slide deck admits that “Turnout in 2024 was actually higher than turnout in 2020 among UC groups in some swing states—Georgia, Nevada, and Michigan.” Georgia’s “Underrepresented” or “UC” turnout, defined as turnout from African American, Latino, Asian, under 35, and unmarried women voters, increased by nearly 200,000 votes, or 6.8 percent, while “non-UC” votes decreased by nearly 180,000, or 9.2 percent. That means Georgia’s “UC” turnout increased, while “UC” turnout decreased nationwide, particularly in states like California, New York, and Wisconsin.  

The VPC confronted this embarrassing irony by shamelessly and repeatedly ignoring it.   

For example, on September 9, 2025, in a statement on their lawsuit being shot down in court, Tom Lopach, president of the VPC said;

“This decision is not what we had hoped for. The provisions in S.B. 202 are dangerous and will make it more difficult for Georgians to vote, especially those in the historically underrepresented communities that we serve—people of color, young people and unmarried women.”

But just eight days later, on September 17th (the date at the top of the memo) the VPC research showed that those “historically underrepresented communities” had no trouble at all voting in 2024 and actually voted more.  

This destroys the VPC talking points from eight days earlier so thoroughly that one has to wonder how long the VPC sat on those results, and if they intentionally waited to publish them until after their lawsuit against S.B. 202 was resolved.  

The next month Lopach again ignored the inconvenient findings from his own research when he wrote an op-ed for Time claiming that the Supreme Court was putting the right to vote on trial in Louisiana v. Callais, a case challenging certain redistricting-related elements of the Voting Rights Act. Lopach claimed that “participation among underrepresented voters is slipping—not because they’ve stopped caring, but because states keep putting up new barriers to vote.”  

But VPC’s research shows indifference was the cause. When VPC asked “UC adults” why they didn’t register to vote for 2024, 40.8 percent said they just weren’t interested, 9.9 percent said they weren’t eligible to vote, and 4 percent said they didn’t think their vote would make a difference.  

Another VPC slide has a table revealing the “Top reason for not voting” in 2024 for each demographic surveyed. For African Americans, Latinos, and unmarried women, the top answer was “Not interested,” and for Asian Americans and people under 35, the top answer was “Too busy.”  

VPCs own research shows that “participation among underrepresented voters” is slipping precisely because they don’t care, and that relatively few reported they were stymied by any of the “barriers to vote” that Lopach alleged. 

Lopach then went on to say:  

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. 

What he neglected to mention was that his own group found the worst declines in “UC” turnout happened in Democrat-run states (such as Wisconsin, Arizona, California, and New York) while the state that his group was suing was a top ten performer in “UC” turnout. Did California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Wisconsin’s Tony Evers create “obstacles that make participating increasingly difficult” between 2020 and 2024? 

The “experts” who cried wolf 

Not to be shamed by their hysterical overreactions to Georgia’s election integrity bill, the VPC has now embarked on another media blitz against the proposed SAVE Act, which would require voters to demonstrate proof of citizenship before casting a ballot. VPC has published a half-dozen blogs and op-eds advocating against the proposal and has produced a new report claiming that 83 percent of voters would not be able to register in the same way they did in 2024 if the SAVE Act were passed. This, they claim, will “negatively impact and disenfranchise” a whopping “21 million” American citizens who “do not currently have access to documentary proof of citizenship” while “disproportionately [impacting] already underrepresented groups like women, people of color, trans individuals, and young people.” 

Is there any reason VPC should be believed this time?  

Have they done anything to explain why they were so utterly wrong about their last moral panic?  

Is there any reason we should trust all the other “experts” who stood alongside the VPC and tried to orchestrate boycotts of an entire state over fears that turned out to be completely baseless? 

Absolutely not.