Samuel Alito Cited Fudged Data in His Ruling Gutting Voting Rights Act
Alito cited data provided by the Department of Justice that used faulty methodology.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito relied on misleading data to support his ruling decimating the Voting Rights Act, The Guardian reported Friday.

In the court’s majority opinion, Alito claimed that the kind of racial discrimination that had prompted the creation of the Voting Rights Act no longer existed.

“Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana,” Alito wrote.

He was citing a friend-of-the-court brief submitted by the Department of Justice, which relied on a statistical methodology that is not preferred by experts in determining statewide voter turnout. The brief calculated Black and white voter turnout in Louisiana as a proportion of the total population of each racial group over the age of 18. This is generally considered a suboptimal method because it includes people who can’t vote, including noncitizens and people with felony convictions.

Experts typically prefer to consider voter turnout as a proportion of the citizen voting age population, or the eligible population. Using this methodology, The Guardian determined that Black voter turnout in Louisiana only exceeded white voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election.

Using the DOJ’s data, Alito also elided the fact that the racial voter gap is actually widening. In the three most recent presidential elections since Barack Obama was on the ballot, Black voter turnout has trailed white voter turnout, according to The Guardian’s analysis. In Louisiana, the disparity grew wider between 2016, 2020, and 2024.

Kevin Morris, a researcher at the Brennan Center for Justice, said that Alito’s claim is “simply not factual,” and that the turnout gap had “exploded” over the last three years.

Michael McDonald, a leading expert on voter turnout who teaches at the University of Florida, told The Guardian that relying on this “misleading” methodology was purposeful. “If I wanted to manipulate the numbers in a way that was favorable to the government’s interest, I would be using voting age population,” McDonald said.

“They had to fudge how they’re calculating the turnout rate to get there, and they’re not even taking into account margin of error, and all these other methodology issues about the current population survey to arrive at that number,” he said. “Someone knew what they were doing.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has opened the door for redistricting efforts across the country, as Republicans rush to redraw Democrat-led districts, many of which have majority-Black populations.

BOTTOM LINE:

Mike Young
@micyoung75
The racial turnout gap has exploded over 15 years. Shelby County directly increased it. The Court suppressed Black turnout, then cited the lower turnout to justify ending VRA protection. The data used to dismantle the VRA was shaped by the prior dismantling of the VRA.
10:46 AM · May 8, 2026
https://x.com/micyoung75/status/2052777175015665948?s=20

Mike Young
@micyoung75
The VRA ruling in Louisiana v. Callais landed. Within hours, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee were moving to eliminate their substantially Black congressional districts. The plans were pre-built. They were waiting for legal clearance.

The Waldman piece contains a specific detail about the military base renames that deserves more than a footnote. Congress passed a law prohibiting military facilities from being named after Confederate leaders. The DoD’s response was to search through millions of service records to find individuals who happened to share surnames with the traitors – Bragg, Hill, Pickett, Lee – then formally declare the bases were named after those other Americans all along. Waldman says the administration delivered this explanation with “a sneer and a giggle.”

A government-maintained fiction, entered into official records, presented as policy. Not a workaround. A stated lie.
Roberts’s work on dismantling the VRA started not last week but during his years as a young Reagan administration lawyer in the 1980s. Louisiana v. Callais is the completion of a four-decade project. The Court’s conservative supermajority was built specifically to deliver it.

The Albert Pike statue – Confederate general, central figure in the early Ku Klux Klan – was torn down by activists in 2020. The Trump administration reinstalled it last year.
https://x.com/micyoung75/status/2053565991309721602?s=20

Emoluments Clause
@Emolclause
#BREAKING: Melissa Murray: “…Republicans…are given a MAJOR ASSIST from this court which, as Marc [Elias] says, has thrown away its past protocols and has basically eliminated that 32-day delay that typically accompanies a ruling, and has allowed this to go into effect RIGHT AWAY…Justice Jackson had very sharp words for her colleagues who put this into place…Justice Alito…called her…critiques baseless and insulting. They are not baseless and they are not insulting. This is a court that has basically thrown out the rule book in order to allow the Republican Party to consolidate its advantage across the South and to effectively disenfranchise voters as Louisiana is doing. 42,000 votes were already cast in that primary election and now Governor Landry is trying to stop everything, call a new election.”🤦‍♀️
https://x.com/Emolclause/status/2053435769952346319?s=20

Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
“Looking back now, it’s clear that the desire to undo the Civil Rights Era — and even restore the Confederacy to a place of honor — never disappeared. It was sometimes set to the side and reshaped, but they kept the fire burning with unwavering attention.”
https://x.com/atrupar/status/2052503418711744600?s=20

Chris Towler
@blkprofcct
Just another reminder that the states we see rolling back voting rights today & eliminating Black representation NEVER wanted Black people to have rights to begin with: they were FORCED to do so by federal law. Now that they’re not anymore…it’s right back to their racist ways.
https://x.com/blkprofcct/status/2053497950555570319?s=20

Mike Young
@micyoung75
The Guardian piece is worth reading carefully because the evidentiary structure it documents is specific.

Alito’s majority opinion gutting the VRA rested on a particular factual claim: Black voter turnout exceeded white voter turnout in two of the last five presidential elections, both nationally and in Louisiana. That claim was copied almost verbatim from a DOJ amicus brief. The DOJ calculated turnout as a proportion of total voting age population – which includes non-citizens, people with felony convictions, and others who cannot legally vote.

The widely accepted methodology uses citizen voting age population, which excludes ineligible voters. Using that method, The Guardian found Black turnout in Louisiana exceeded white turnout in only one of the last five elections – not two. Using Louisiana’s own secretary of state data, Black turnout has not exceeded white turnout in any of the last five elections.

The DOJ was asked why it used the inferior methodology. It acknowledged using total VAP. It did not answer the question about why.

Michael McDonald, one of the nation’s leading voter turnout experts: “If I wanted to manipulate the numbers in a way that was favorable to the government’s interest, I would be using voting age population.” He added: “Someone knew what they were doing.”

The racial turnout gap has “exploded” over the last 15 years. The 2013 Shelby County ruling directly increased that gap. The Court’s prior decision suppressed Black voter turnout. The new ruling cited the resulting lower turnout as evidence protection was no longer needed.
https://x.com/micyoung75/status/2053656588439687184?s=20

Mike Young
@micyoung75
Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee moved to eliminate Black congressional districts within hours of the VRA ruling. Hours. The redistricting maps were pre-built and waiting for legal clearance. The Roberts Court provided it after four decades of work toward exactly this outcome.
10:31 PM · May 7, 2026
https://x.com/micyoung75/status/2052592266267468264?s=20

Too bad. He presides over the WORST COURT SINCE TANEY

The United States versus Elon R. Musk
@Needle_of_Arya
John Roberts has actively plotted to dismantle both the liberal state & the post-1970 pro-envionmental order for decades, but also doesn’t want to be remembered as badly as the thoroughly wicked & evil Justice Taney of the infamous Dred Scott decision.
https://x.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/2053556178773258531?s=20

anyone_want_chips
@anyonewantchips
Know what’s insulting: John Roberts claiming we’re not smart enough to understand what’s going on. Oh, we understand exactly what’s going on: the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority are political actors.
https://x.com/i/status/2053509621990523340

Marc E. Elias
@marceelias
I often say that the fight for democracy is the fight of our generation. But let me be clear, if you aren’t fighting for Black voting rights right now then you aren’t really fighting for democracy.
12:40 PM · May 10, 2026
https://x.com/marceelias/status/2053530631292821698?s=20

Marc E. Elias
@marceelias
What has me worried — what we all need to focus on — is that something important in our democracy broke last week, and we are only beginning to see the fallout.
https://x.com/marceelias/status/2053643346208587973?s=20

Marc E. Elias
@marceelias
The foundation of our democracy is burning. It did not begin with Donald Trump, but he stoked the flames. The conservative Roberts Court did not light the match, but it has repeatedly declared fire hydrants, sprinklers and smoke detectors illegal.
https://x.com/marceelias/status/2053584164352573576?s=20

Donna Brazile
@donnabrazile
Final thoughts on #JimCrow: My conservatives colleagues have argued it’s time to return to a “colorblind” system of governance. Race has been a defining characteristic of American life. How can we apply colorblindness to a society still shaped by historical racial inequality?
8:01 AM · May 10, 2026
https://x.com/donnabrazile/status/2053460469134897447?s=20

Michelle_BYoung
@michelle_byoung
They’re pretending to be naive and pretending that using “color blindness” is actually being NEUTRAL when in actuality it’s just reifying White Supremacy and weaponizing acknowledging racial disparities as the problem in itself not the problem that needs solution.
https://x.com/i/status/2053677195176935933

The Atlantic
@TheAtlantic
“What the Roberts Court is making possible,”
@AdamSerwer
argues, “is a country where white people can maintain their political dominance at the expense of Americans who are not white.” He examines what to expect following the Voting Rights Act ruling:
https://x.com/TheAtlantic/status/2053373226621812961?s=20