The majority opinion in Smith v. Allwright, the Supreme Court case argued by Thurgood Marshall that declared all-white Texas primaries unconstitutional.1
Project 2025 proposes policy changes to limit the political participation of Black and other marginalized communities, which will significantly discourage both census participation and voter engagement. These policy proposals will directly harm Black communities and other communities of color, undermining efforts to achieve an accurate census count and weakening the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) capacity to defend voting rights.
Project 2025 will undercut efforts to increase Black people’s political participation by:
The U.S. Census Bureau, the federal government’s largest statistical agency, regularly conducts a census to determine the population of the United States.2 Article I, Section Two of the U.S. Constitution provides that the census must be conducted every ten years and gives Congress the power to carry out the census in a manner that is directed by law.3 Pursuant to this provision, Congress passed the Census Act,4 which requires the Secretary of Commerce to “take a decennial census of population” and grants the secretary discretion to do so “in such form and content as he may determine”5 and to “obtain such other census information as necessary.”6 The Bureau’s charge is to “provide information that is accurate, reliable, and unbiased” and to “ensure that its information products are presented in an accurate, clear, complete, and unbiased manner,” noting that “using highly qualified people to prepare data products” is important to achieving objectivity.7
Mistrust of the government is a significant challenge to full census participation, potentially affecting both accuracy and completeness. For over 200 years, the Bureau has aimed to be a professional scientific agency, keeping its distance from partisan reactions to the statistics generated. The Bureau’s reputation for nonpartisan, independent science is the bedrock of voting rights enforcement because it earns public cooperation and respect.
Project 2025 will overhaul the Census Bureau and make changes that will politicize and jeopardize its role as a nonpartisan agency responsible for accurately counting everyone. Project 2025’s policy agenda includes consolidating the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA),i the Census Bureau, and the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)ii into one agency8 and replacing experienced career civil servants with “strong political leadership” in order “to increase efficiency and align the Census Bureau’s mission with conservative principles.”9 The BEA, Census Bureau, and BLS are statistical agencies created independently with different missions and functions, and they often work cooperatively. Consolidating these agencies will centralize control of data collection, replacing the current decentralized statistical system and making it easier for political appointees to influence the collection, interpretation, and dissemination of vital economic, labor, demographic, and voting data. Under this proposal, the federal government will also allocate additional political appointee positions to the Census Bureau.10 Political appointees are in direct conflict with the Bureau’s commitment to objectivity.11 The changes proposed in Project 2025 will tarnish the Bureau’s reputation, risk data collection, and diminish public confidence in census data.
The politicization of the Census Bureau will exacerbate the undercount of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities. The Census Bureau has a long history of undercounting these communities while overcounting white communities, a disparity that will only worsen under Project 2025’s proposals.12
iThe BEA is an agency within the Department of Commerce. Like the Census Bureau, it produces economic statistics that enable government and business decision-makers, researchers, and the American public to follow and understand the performance of the nation’s economy. Bureau of Econ. Analysis, U.S. Dep’t of Com., Who We Are, https://www.bea.gov/about/who-we-are (last updated on Sept. 16, 2024. The BEA is composed entirely of career civil servants who follow rigorous statistical policies and operate autonomously from any administrative, regulatory, law enforcement, and policymaking entities. Bureau of Econ. Analysis, U.S. Dep’t of Com., Ensuring Data Integrity & Quality at Bea (Apr. 2018), https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2018-04/BEA%20Data%20Integrity%20Final.pdf
ii The BLS measures labor market activity, working conditions, price changes, and productivity in the U.S. economy to support public and private decision-making. The BLS adheres to values and principles such as executing its mission independently from partisan interests. The BLS strives to meet the needs of a diverse set of customers with accurate, objective, relevant, timely, and accessible information, and it protects the confidentiality of its data providers. The BLS is part of the Executive Branch and conducts its “work with independence to ensure that [its] data and analyses are objective and free of partisan influence” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Stategic Plan, FY 2020-2025, U.S. Bureau of Lab. Stats, https://www.bls.gov/bls/bls-strategic-plan-2020-25.html (last updated Jan. 6, 2020).
Chart: Thurgood Marshall Institute. Source: U.S. Census Bureau. Created with Datawrapper.
The 2020 census count provides a window into how political interference undermines a fair and accurate census count. Executive interference to subvert the 2020 count severely limited the Bureau’s data collection by canceling field tests due to budgetary constraints, forcing leadership changes,13 and obstructing data processing operations.14 During this period, political appointees repeatedly rejected the scientific judgments of career Census Bureau officials about the best methods to conduct an accurate and inclusive count.15 Executive efforts to subvert the 2030 count through political appointees, as Project 2025 proposes, will likely repeat and intensify these tactics. Rejecting the best statistical science and manipulating the census will lead to biased decision-making and exacerbate the undercount of Black communities.16 There are extreme political motivations behind these efforts because census data are crucial for political representation and the allocation of essential resources.
The census—a count of every person living in the United States and its territories—is conducted every ten years by the U.S. Census Bureau. The census is used to determine political representation, public services, and federal and state funding. This TMI Brief focuses on the importance of the 2020 census to Black people and their communities.
The Census Bureau estimates that census data are used to allocate more than $675 billion annually to fund critical education, employment, health care, transportation, housing, and veterans’ services at the local level.17
Undercounting Black people in the census leads to insufficient funding of infrastructure and social services. The National Urban League estimates that each completed census form is worth over $4,000 per person.19 Therefore, an undercount of two million people could result in a loss of more than $8 billion in funding.20 Without an accurate census count, programs such as Head Start that provide vital education, health, and nutrition resources to low-income families will not be funded at adequate levels to meet the needs of local community members.
Chart: Thurgood Marshall Institute. Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children & Families. Created with Datawrapper.
The influence of political appointees in the Census Bureau may lead to biased data practices that distort vital demographic statistics, such as data on population, voter registration, and citizen voting age, that are essential for redistricting, enforcing voting rights laws, and ensuring the fair representation of Black communities. The undercount of Black people affects the integrity of local and state governance, redistricting, representation, and the composition of both the Electoral College and U.S. Congress,21 all of which substantially limits the Black community’s political power. A significant undercount can cause a state to lose seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.22 States with large populations of historically undercounted groups, such as California, Texas, and New York, are at higher risk. California, for instance, faces an undercount risk ranging from 0.95% to 1.98%.23 Given that each congressional district represents about 700,000 people, this undercount equates to the loss of approximately three seats in the House of Representatives.24 Undercounting Black communities shifts political representation from areas with high Black populations to predominantly white areas.25
The American people are the bedrock of our system of government, and it is our right to engage in the political process to achieve a more equitable nation and better lives for everyone. Achieving equal representation and being able to cast equal and effective votes depends in part on redistricting maps that are drawn fairly to reflect and respect our communities. Redistricting encompasses the process by which states and the jurisdictions within them redraw the district maps that shape legislative, congressional, and local power.
Project 2025 proposes adding a citizenship question to the census, which will likely deter Black people and other people of color from participating in the census.26 This policy, along with proposals to restructure the Census Bureau and replace long-term civil servants with political appointees, will undermine the accuracy of the 2030 census and efforts to facilitate full political participation in a multi-racial democracy.
Prior administrations have already attempted to add a citizenship question to the census. In March 2018, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced his decision to reinstate a citizenship question on the 2020 census questionnaire at the request of the DOJ, which asserted that it would use census block-level citizenship data to enforce the Voting Rights Act.27 In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Department of Commerce v. New York that the secretary’s decision did not violate the Enumeration Clause of the U.S. Constitution or the Census Act, and that his decision was supported by evidence before the agency.28 However, a plurality of the Justices concluded that the secretary’s decision was unlawful because the reason he gave for adding the citizenship question was not the actual reason for his decision.29 The Supreme Court found that Secretary Ross “was determined to reinstate a citizenship question from the time he entered office.”30 He adopted the Voting Rights Act as the reason “late in the process” after already having “made up his mind” to add a citizenship question for other, unstated reasons.31 Thus, the Supreme Court found his stated reason to be contrived.32 A report procured by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform found that the unstated reason behind efforts to add a citizenship question to the census was the production of data needed to redraw voting districts in a way that would be “advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.”33 Such an outcome would have severely jeopardized the census, thereby undermining the equitable and efficient operations of our democracy. LDF and other civil rights organizations actively opposed the inclusion of a citizenship question in the 2020 census and advocated for congressional legislation to block it. Ultimately, the citizenship question did not make it into the 2020 census questionnaire.
In 2025, the Census Bureau will start a critical planning period for the upcoming 2030 decennial count. This process must remain nonpartisan and be led by civil servant statisticians who have spent decades working to ensure an accurate census count. Project 2025’s proposal directly threatens the success of that process.
Our Democracy Defended report incorporates data points and observations conveyed during elections in LDF’s target states in 2022. It also reflects lessons informed by these findings and key takeaways from prior Democracy Defended reports that can position civil rights advocates to engage strategically to support voters in 2024 and beyond.
Project 2025 advances policies that jeopardize the United States’ multi-racial democracy, including a recommendation to transfer election-related offenses from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to its Criminal Division.34 This sends a clear message of criminalizing the act of voting, which can discourage Americans from participating in elections for fear of unwarranted prosecution.
Transferring election-related offenses from the Voting Section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division to the Criminal Division will create yet another barrier to voting for Black people and will lead to enforcement by attorneys who are not trained in civil rights enforcement and the unique history of obstacles to voting. Voting rights attorneys have experience and knowledge of the federal voting rights laws enforced by the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section. Moving enforcement of these civil laws, which offer civil remedies, to a section with experience in criminal enforcement will dilute the ability of the DOJ to defend voting rights.
This change will also signal a shift in what the government considers to be key violations of voting rights laws. The purpose of the Voting Section has long been to enforce statutes that eliminate barriers to voting for communities that have struggled to exercise their right to vote. However, some officials have claimed, without evidence, that voting fraud is a more significant issue than these historic and persistent barriers to voting. Although extensive research reveals that voter fraud is very rare and that many instances of alleged fraud are actually isolated mistakes by voters or administrators,35 numerous states have embraced the criminalization of voting, serving as a runway for Project 2025’s federal efforts.
Millions of Americans who have a vested interest in the fairness of our criminal legal system–those who are detained while awaiting their criminal trial–are denied a meaningful opportunity to vote, despite their right under the law to do so.
Thurgood Marshall Institute Senior Researcher Dr. Sandhya Kajeepeta explores the state of felony disenfranchisement.
In many locales, Black residents already struggle to vote due to obstacles such as long lines, restrictions on absentee ballots, and voter purges. Recent legislation has gone even further: Since the 2020 election, twenty-six states have either enacted new or toughened existing punishments for a total of 120 election-related crimes.36 Eighteen of these election-related crimes punish people for making an error while voting or during the voter registration or ballot request process, and eleven of these voter fraud crimes are deemed felonies.37 Florida’s new Office of Election Crimes and Security arrested nineteen residents, fifteen of whom were Black, for allegedly committing voter fraud in the 2020 election.38 Those arrested face up to five years in prison and fines of up to $5,000. However, numerous media reports found that the people arrested did not know they were ineligible to vote, and in some cases, they were even told by local elections officials that they could vote.39
The criminalization of voting will have a suppressive effect on people’s ability to exercise a critical constitutional right that, in the words of the Supreme Court, is “preservative” of all rights.40 It will also likely lead to more cases of unfair arrest and incarceration of Black voters, including increased voter intimidation for formerly incarcerated people seeking to restore their voting rights. More than four million people are disenfranchised in the United States due to a felony conviction.41 Because of the myriad ways in which the criminal legal system disproportionately surveils, targets, and punishes Black communities, Black people are disproportionately shut out from voting booths. One in nineteen Black adults of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate that is 3.5 times higher than that of non-Black individuals.42 Formerly incarcerated people already must navigate convoluted and ever-changing processes to restore their right to vote. States typically offer little to no help so that people can determine their eligibility to vote, and officials often provide incorrect information.43 As a result, efforts to criminalize voting pose unique threats to formerly incarcerated people, who may face a multi-year prison sentence for simply making an innocuous error when trying to navigate the complex voter rights restoration process.44 Project 2025’s proposals will amplify and strengthen the punitive legislation many states have enacted to threaten and suppress the voting rights of Black people and other people of color.
In sum, Project 2025’s proposals will have a chilling effect on both census participation and voter turnout. By undercutting efforts to secure an accurate census count and weakening the DOJ’s ability to defend voting rights, these policies will inflict substantial harm on Black communities and other communities of color by depriving them of representation, resources, and political power.
LDF holds an affirmative vision of a multi-racial democracy where dignity is sacred and power is shared. In pursuit of this vision, LDF engages in advocacy efforts to defend and advance democracy by building Black political power, fighting against efforts to suppress it, and challenging anti-democratic policies and practices. LDF played an instrumental role in securing the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and has continued to ensure that Black political participation is not curtailed through gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts. For decades, LDF has fought vigorously to expand and defend voting rights and mobilize Black communities so they do not fall victim to fear-based tactics that hinder their political participation.
1 Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944).
2 About the Decennial Census of Population and Housing, U.S. Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/about.html (last updated Dec. 16, 2021).
3 Section Two states, “The actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct.” See also, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/about.html (stating “In 1954, Congress codified earlier census acts and all other statutes authorizing the decennial census into law under Title 13, U.S. Code. Title 13 requires the Census Bureau to notify Congress of the planned subjects for the census no later than three years before that census, and of the specific wording of questions to be asked no later than two years before that census.”).
4 13 U.S.C. §141
5 Id.
6 Id.
7 Objectivity, U.S. Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/about/policies/quality/guidelines/objectivity.html (Dec. 16, 2021).
8 Paul Dans & Steven Groves, eds., Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, Heritage Found. at 664 (2023) [hereinafter Project 2025], https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf.
9 Id. at 679.
10 Id.
11 Objectivity, supra note 7.
12 Hansi Lo Wang, The 2020 Census Had Big Undercounts of Black People, Latinos and Native Americans, NPR (Mar. 11, 2022), https://www.npr.org/2022/03/10/1083732104/2020-census-accuracy-undercount-overcount-data-quality.
13 Douglas Strane & Heather M. Griffis, Inaccuracies in the 2020 Census Enumeration Could Create a Misalignment Between States’ Needs, 108 Am. J. Pub. Health 1330 (Oct. 2018), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137784/.
14 Thomas Wolf et al., Improving the Census, Brennan Ctr. For Just. (Sept. 13, 2022), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-solutions/improving-census.
15 Id.
16 Kenneth Pruitt, Politics and Science in Census Taking, PBR (Nov. 20, 2003), https://www.prb.org/resources/politics-and-science-in-census-taking/.
17 Thurgood Marshall Inst., Black People and the Census: Undercounted Means Underfunded and Underrepresented (Apr. 2020), https://tminstituteldf.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/TMI-Census-Brief-1-1.pdf (citing Andrew Reamer finds that census data is involved in the distribution of $1.5 trillion in public funding. The Census Bureau calculates the number at $675 billion. Reamer argues that his accounting is more comprehensive than the Census Bureau’s because it is more current: His analysis is based on Fiscal Year 2017; the Census Bureau analysis is based on Fiscal Year 2015. The Census Bureau finds 132 programs to Reamer’s 316. In both cases, inflation and population growth would mean that the dollar amounts would be higher in 2020 than what is found in those analyses.) See Part B: State Estimates at 1, 9, in Andrew Reamer, Counting for Dollars 2020: The Role of the Decennial Census in the Geographic Distribution of Fed. Funds, Geo Wash. Inst. Of Pub. Pol’y (Feb. 2020), https://gwipp.gwu.edu/counting-dollars-2020-role-decennial-census-geographic-distribution-federal-funds; Marisa Hotchkiss & Jessica Phelan, Uses of Census Bureau Data in Federal Funds Distribution at 3, U.S. Census Bureau (Sept. 2017), https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/program-management/working-papers/Uses-of-Census-Bureau-Data-in-Federal-Funds-Distribution.pdf.
18 Hotchkiss & Phelan, supra note 17.
19 Nat’l Urb. League, Historic Census Undercount of Black Americans Robs Communities of Billions in Funding and Fair Political Representation (Sep. 30, 2024), https://nul.org/news/historic-census-undercount-of-black-americans-robs-communities.
20 Id.
21 Nat’l Urb. League, Democracy is Destiny—The United States Needs an Accurate Black Count (Oct. 1, 2024), https://nul.org/demography-is-destiny.
22 Thurgood Marshall Inst., Black People and the Census, https://tminstituteldf.org/black-people-and-the-census/ (last accessed Oct. 1, 2024).
23 Diane Elliott et al., Assessing Miscounts in the 2020 Census, Urb. Inst. (2019), https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/100324/assessing_miscounts_in_the_2020_census.pdf.
24 Nat’l Urb. League, supra note 19.
25 Id.
26 Project 2025, supra note 8 at 680
27 Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 588 U.S. 752, 752(2019)
28 Id. at 756.
29 Id.)
30 Davin Rosborough, Supreme Court Finds That Wilbur Ross Lied to Put Citizenship Question on the 2020 Census, ACLU (June 27, 2019), https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/supreme-court-finds-wilbur-ross-lied-put-citizenship-question-2020-census.
31 Id.
32 Dep’t of Com. v. New York, 588 U.S. at 756.
33 Letter from Dale Ho to Scott Harris, Clerk of the Court, re. Dep’t of Com. v. New York No. 18-966, Supreme Court Docket, https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-966/101439/20190530142417722_2019.05.30%20NYIC%20Respondents%20Notice%20of%20Filing%20–%20Final.pdf; Exs. At 63, No. 1:18-cv-02921-JMF, May 30, 2019, ECF 587-1, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6077735-May-30-2019-Exhibit.html#document/p63/a504019.
34 Michael Harriot, I Read The Entire Project 2025. Here Are the Top 10 Ways It Would Harm Black America, the Grio (July 15, 2024), https://thegrio.com/2024/07/15/i-read-the-entire-project-2025-here-are-the-top-10-ways-it-would-harm-black-america/.
35 Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth, Brannan Ctr. For Just. (Jan. 31, 2017), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debunking-voter-fraud-myth.
36 Kira Lerner, Election Officials Risk Criminal Charges Under 31 New GOP-Imposed Penalties, Kan. Reflector (July 17, 2022), https://kansasreflector.com/2022/07/17/election-officials-risk-criminal-charges-under-31-new-gop-imposed-penalties/.
37 Id.
38 Governor Ron DeSantis Announces the Appointment of Peter Antonacci as Director of the Office of Election Crimines and Security, Off. of Ron DeSantis Fla. Governor (July 6, 2022), https://www.flgov.com/2022/07/06/governor-ron-desantis-announces-the-appointment-of-peter-antonacci-as-director-of-the-office-of-election-crimes-and-security/; Nicole Lewis & Alexandra Arriaga, Florida’s Voter Fraud Arrests Are Scaring away Formerly Incarerated Voters, The Marshall Project (Nov. 4, 2022), https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/11/04/florida-s-voter-fraud-arrests-are-scaring-away-formerly-incarcerated-voters ; Wayne Washington, Voter Intimidation? Black Voters Over-Represented Among Those Arrested So Far for Election Crimes, Palm Beach Post (Oct. 10, 2022), https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2022/10/10/black-voters-over-represented-among-those-arrested-election-crimes/10436294002/.
39 Matt Dixon, Defendants Targeted in DeSantis’ Voter Fraud Crackdown Were Told They Could Vote, Politico (Aug. 26, 2022), https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/26/desantis-voter-fraud-defendants-florida-00053788.
40 Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 370 (1886); see also, Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 667 (1966) (stating, “[u]ndoubtedly, the right of suffrage is a fundamental matter in a free and democratic society. Especially since the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights, any alleged infringement of the right of citizens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized.”).
41 Christopher Uggen et al., Locked Out 2022: Estimates of People Denied Voting Rights, The Sentencing Project (Oct. 2025, 2022), https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/locked-out-2022-estimates-of-people-denied-voting-rights/.
42 Id.
43 Lewis & Arriaga, supra note 38.
44. See, e.g., Sam Levine, The Untold Story of How a U.S. Woman Was Sentenced to Six Years for Voting, the Guardian (Dec. 27, 2022), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/27/pamela-moses-voting-rights-mistake-jail.
