The Republican-controlled North Carolina Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned the election of one of its members because temporarily blocked the certification minimal victory of the incumbent Democrat president. The move gives the court time to consider an appeal by her Republican opponent, state Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, who cited debunked legal theories in his previous failed attempts to block the re-election of Judge Alison Riggs.
Griffin sought to have his claims decided by the Supreme Court, which he hopes to join and which is chaired by his mentor. On Monday, a federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump imprisoned Griffin’s challenge to the state Supreme Court. State Election Commission now asking federal appeals court to send case back to federal court.
Riggs won re-election by 734 votes, a narrow margin that was confirmed by two recounts. While contesting the election results, she will remain in court, although she herself withdrew from the case.
Griffin is asking the Supreme Court to throw out roughly 60,000 ballots — an unprecedented request based on a theory that has been rejected by both the state Board of Elections and a federal judge.
Griffin did not respond to a request for comment. He previously refused to respond to ProPublica’s questions, saying commenting on pending litigation would be a violation of the state’s judicial code of conduct.
“This is very dangerous for democracy in North Carolina,” said Anne Webb, policy director for Common Cause North Carolina, a get-out-the-vote organization. If the state Supreme Court sided with Griffin and overturned Riggs’ victory, it would open up an opportunity for future candidates to “challenge the election rules and get retroactive votes. If there is an endless process of challenging the rules and results of elections after the fact, our whole system could come to a standstill.”
This case is even more exceptional, Webb said, because “so far Judge Griffin has not presented evidence of a single instance of voter fraud or illegal voting. He just vaguely mentioned that there wasn’t enough voter ID verification and he’s using that to try to overturn the election.”
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Griffin argues that voters in the North Carolina election database who do not have driver’s licenses or Social Security information should have their ballots counted. This theory was created and supported by far-right activists working with a conservative organization that operated in secret are preparing to challenge the election results if Trump loses 2024 election, This is reported by ProPublica. The organization, Election Integrity Network, is headed by a lawyer who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election.
State election officials and a federal judge have repeatedly rejected that theory, finding that it exists many legitimate reasons to have that information missing, including voters who registered before state records were updated about a year ago to require the data. “There is virtually no chance of voter fraud resulting from a voter’s failure to provide a driver’s license or social security number on their registration,” Atty. state election commission wrote in legal documents.
Neither Griffin nor right-wing activists proved a single case of voter fraud among 60,000 ballots.
In July 2024 in a conversation with the North Carolina chapter of the Election Integrity Network, a far-right activist argued that a candidate who lost a tie election could use the theory to challenge a result he disagreed with, according to a recording obtained by ProPublica. When a branch leader expressed concern about the legality of the theory, calling it “voter suppression” and “100%” certain to fail in the courts, another activist said, “I guess we’ll figure it out.” The data analysis and arguments of this activist became the basis for the Republican National Committee’s attempt to disqualify hundreds of thousands of voters before the election and Griffin’s attempt to cancel the election. ProPublica found.
ProPublica reported in December that Griffin described Chief Justice Paul Newby as “a good friend and teacher” and what Griffin wrote when announcing his candidacy for the Supreme Court: “We’re a team that knows how to win — the same team that helped elect Chief Justice Paul Newby and three other members of the current Republican majority.”
Newby and the other judges did not respond to a detailed list of questions about the December story.
Not all Republican judges agreed with blocking the certification of Riggs’ victory. “To allow a post-election trial that seeks to rewrite our state’s election rules — and, as a result, disenfranchise people who have already legally voted under the existing rules — is incredibly mischievous,” said Republican Judge Richard Dietz. wrote in disagreementstressing that Griffin’s challenge to the 60,000 ballots was “almost certainly without merit.” He was joined by Democratic Justice Anita Earls, breaking ranks with four other Republican members of the court.
Allowing Griffin’s trial to continue, Dietz said, “would cast doubt on the finality of the post-election vote count, encourage new legal challenges that significantly delay the certification of the results, and fuel an already troubling decline in public faith in our elections.”
