Mixed Ruling on NC Supreme Court Race From State’s Highest Court Has Democrats Seeing Red
“Friday afternoon, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck a blow to [Democrat] Justice Allison Riggs, paving the way for challenger Jefferson Griffin to eventually win November’s election (in June).”
The 2024 North Carolina Supreme Court race is still undecided thanks to challenges that have been working their way through the courts after the GOP candidate, Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, questioned the validity of some 65,000 ballots after the initial count and recount showed him behind his opponent, Democrat Justice Allison Riggs, by only 734 votes.
Among the reasons for the challenges are voters who Griffin’s legal team has said had incorrect/incomplete voter registration information or didn’t include a photo ID. The latter are related to overseas absentee ballots, including some from voters who were born abroad to NC parents but who have never lived in NC.
This month, we’ve seen significant action on this case, first from the NC Court of Appeals, who in a 2-1 decision on April 4th ruled that Griffin’s challenges were valid:
The largest category of ballots challenged were cast by individuals whose registration records lacked a driver’s license number or last four digits of a Social Security number. The information has been required of registrants since 2004, but Griffin’s attorneys argue the board failed to carry out the requirement properly for years. Another category came from military or overseas voters who did not provide copies of photo identification or ID exception forms with their ballots. Photo voter ID is otherwise required in North Carolina.
For these two categories, the judges ultimately directed the state board to tell county election officials to notify the voters and give them 15 business days to provide missing information or photo identification. If provided in time and verified, then those ballots would still count, the opinion reads.
In the third category — involving potentially hundreds of overseas voters who have never lived in the U.S. — their ballots cannot be counted because they’re ineligible under state residency laws, according to Tyson and Gore.
After that ruling, Riggs and the state elections board petitioned the NC Supreme Court for a temporary stay, which was granted, and a review of the Appeals Court’s ruling.
On April 11th, the NC Supreme Court — which consists of 5 Republicans and 2 Democrats (Riggs recused herself) — issued its own ruling, reversing the Appeals Court’s ruling on the 60,000 ballots in the first category but upholding their verdict on the other two categories:
The North Carolina Supreme Court split 4-2 Friday afternoon in a decision designed to resolve the dispute over last fall’s high court election. A unanimous court agreed that more than 60,000 ballots cast by voters with incomplete voter registration records should count. But the fate of 5,700 other challenged ballots remains uncertain.
More than 5,500 overseas voters who did not provide photo identification would get 30 days to provide ID information and have their ballots counted. Some 267 voters who never have lived in North Carolina would have their votes discarded.
Michael Pruser, Decision Desk HQ Director of Data Science, believes the NC Supreme Court’s ruling “paves the way” for Griffin to eventually win his fight:
Friday afternoon, the North Carolina Supreme Court struck a blow to Justice Allison Riggs, paving the way for challenger Jefferson Griffin to eventually win November's election (in June).
The high state court ruled that the 60,000+ ballots lacking proper registration details… pic.twitter.com/1RX87SmZD1
— Michael Pruser (@MichaelPruser) April 12, 2025
Pointing to analysis from freelance journalist Bryan Anderson, Pruser made the following observations:
Bryan has been all over this story and provided a sheet that shows the voters in need of curing (potentially in need of curing) and those who’s votes will not count.
1,409 Guilford voters need curing
In a normal random sample of a 50/50, the curing of 5,500 ballots would be extremely unlikely to change a race decided by 734 votes. However, these are not a random sample of votes, rather the most Democratic votes in the state.
The 5,776 UOCAVA ballots here, as a block, vote left of Philadelphia. A match of names provided by @BryanRAnderson to the current NC voter file shows these voters are D+53 by registration, and a conservative estimate suggests their votes would be D+70 by results (potentially higher).
Thus, for every ballot uncured, Riggs would lose 0.7 votes. The court has already decided to toss 267 of these votes (reducing Riggs’ lead by ~187 votes), so all it would reasonably take for the election to flip is for an additional ~800 votes to remain uncured.
The NC Supreme Court did extend the curing period to 30 calendar days after notice is provided, but the curing task here is a herculean effort for Dems. In a normal setting, you can group volunteers in urban areas and doorknock 16 hours a day.
Here, however, voters aren’t just spread out; they’re spread out across the world. To boot, the race isn’t high profile enough for many to notice and thus if the NC Supreme Court decision is left in place and the full set of UOCAVA voters are required to cure, the only path for Riggs to keep her win is to organize the greatest cure operation the world has ever seen.
The outcome of Allison Riggs’ Federal Appeals petition is what will determine the outcome of this race.
Conservative John Locke Foundation Research Fellow Jim Stirling disagrees, saying the advantage is Riggs’:
Riggs v. Griffin will likely come down to if the courts ambiguous ruling applies to solely the original protest filings by Griffin or not. #ncpol
If it's the original protest, Riggs would still win. If 70% of the contested votes were for her she would still win by 72.
— J.Stirling (@JStirling16) April 12, 2025
D's would be advantaged in the ballot cure process for the UOCAVA ID voters simply because of the numbers advantage of those being protested.
Griffin would either need the larger pool of voters included, or a statistically improbable number of these voters to have gone for Riggs
— J.Stirling (@JStirling16) April 12, 2025
Civitas Center for Public Integrity Director Andy Jackson is of a similar mindset, writing that “this ruling has considerably shrunk [Griffin’s] window of opportunity for winning the race. He is now unlikely to overcome the 734-vote margin he faces.”
Thanks to an emergency motion from Riggs, Chief U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers has been pulled into this case once again and has already weighed in, allowing the NC Supreme Court’s order to be followed but ordering the board of elections not to certify the election “pending further order of this court“:
U.S. Chief District Judge Richard Myers will allow SCONC's plan for resolving the election dispute to move forward. He wants details by Tuesday about "the number of potentially affected voters and the counties in which those voters cast ballots." #ncga #ncpol @CarolinaJournal… https://t.co/YNuWq8awDF
— Mitch Kokai (@mitchkokai) April 12, 2025
The Usual Suspects’ accusations of “Griffin’s trying to steal the election!” are growing louder the longer this plays out. But the issues Griffin has presented before the courts on state election law and questionable actions and inaction from the partisan Democrat-controlled state board of elections have been begging to be resolved well before the 2024 NC Supreme Court race.
-Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter/X.-
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Comments
Why does every recount always seem to result in the democrat all of a sudden leading? Yes this is a rhetorical question and it is probably not true that recounts always lead to democrat leads, but it just seems that way.
Why does every recount always seem to result in the democrat all of a sudden leading?
Because Democrats cheat!
Why do Democrats cheat?
Because they’re cheaters!
Why are Democrats cheaters?
Because they cheat!
They cheat because it works
That is not the case here. We’re not talking about a recount, we’re talking about disputed votes that have not yet been counted at all. Those votes weren’t counted because the Republican challenged them, and the Dem is already ahead without them. Now almost all of them will be counted, so we should expect the Dem’s majority to increase. I simply don’t understand how the first-quoted expert thinks this can be good for the Republican.
I tested this out on my “not insane” Democrat friends
Their reaction? Yeah a bunch of these ballots should be thrown out. They get it.
Republicans need to have the courage to challenge and do this more often.
The voters want vote integrity, it’s a popular issue.
I don’t understand why a law that requires a Social Security number is not enforced. The legislature has the authority to make these rules.
The Republican judges just don’t get it. Elections are being stolen through these lapses.
When the country completely falls apart, I hope their smugness is some comfort to them. It sure won’t be to anyone else.
The legislature makes the rules, and they aren’t enforced. Not much for the legislature to do here. The people running the elections are breaking the law.
This brings to mind: we now learn from DOGE that many laws passed with sunsets just keep getting funded without any legislation to reauthorize them. In this case the legislature really is cheating, funding a program that has no authority.
These programs were passed with sunset for a reason. They could not have passed as permanent programs. And if Congress can’t get around to all the reauthorizations, it means government is too complex and should have fewer programs. Shut those expired programs down!
There’s above 1,500 of those where the authorization of the program has long since expired yet appropriations keep being made. Partly this is due to use of CR. Part is due to stupid budget rules. Part is due to laziness by Congress
Mostly though it is due to not wanting to ‘rock the boat’ by Congress. Far easier to scream and yell at Thomas Massie pointing out all this crap and demanding Congress go back to making hard decisions v avoiding them. Much easier to claim today’s budget vote is a ‘crisis’ and reform will come ‘next time’. Go along/get along.
For this I think it is less laziness and more about indifference and avoidance. They don’t really care about this money and they are afraid that it will really upset someone if the money stops. Really upset people turn out votes against incumbents. Mildly irritated unlikely voters stay home.
Indifference/laziness is a factor. IMO the real problem is the fear of rocking the boat, PO voters and becoming unelected as.a result. Maybe threatened with a primary opponent funded by ‘leadership PACs’ There’s also the issue of committee assignments and office space that is under control of Congressional Leadership. PO the leadership who don’t want to deal with these issues and you find yourself off more important committees and jammed into the least desirable offices.
See my comment below with a long quote from the linked article, quoting the court’s decision. It seems that the state board of elections has not been “conforming its conduct to the law’s requirements”, but the court’s precedent says that’s the board’s fault not the voters’, so the voters should not be disenfranchised for it.
This case highlights the real election fraud; the bad voter registrations. Here there were 60K registrations deemed incomplete. Another way to phrase that is ‘not in compliance with State Elections Law’ ..aka..illegal. Here are 60K votes cast by improperly/illegally registered voters. No more BS out those who claim that fraud in elections is rare.
The voter registration system is ground zero for election shenanigans. Fix that problem and much of the shenanigans become impossible b/c there is no vote and ballot to argue about.
I wonder if these 60k illegal voters voted on their own accord, or was there an organized ‘get out the vote’ campaign that produced their votes?
Both? All of.them aren’t gonna turn out to be part of a conspiracy. Some.will be accidental. Some.will be old registration that were ‘grandfathered’ over many decades. It doesn’t appear that there was much oversight or interest in monitoring or ensuring compliance. I suspect it is more likely carelessness which created a vulnerability that was open to being exploited by an organized effort. Then the issue, if known, became so large a county clerk for local DA didn’t want to create a.stink. choosing to ‘let sleeping dogs lay’. That’s my guess.
There wouldn’t have been a campaign that focused on these incomplete registrations. Just the general Dem GOTV effort, that brought out hundreds of thousands of voters, some small number of which had incomplete registrations, mostly not their fault but that of the board of elections.
How can someone who has never lived in a state register to vote in that state?
Those are a separate category not part of the 60K. Probably created the option due military voters for spouse/dependent of service members at Bragg. Dude gets assigned to Bragg, buys a little starter home, gets reassigned elsewhere. Uses the Bragg area address as HoR and voter registration purposes, gets reassigned elsewhere, gets married, spouse offered the option to change HoR to the same address for tax purposes and voter registration.
That’s my guess. It’s a real pain in the ass sometimes dealing with normal civilian ‘stuff’ when in the military. Especially when assigned overseas. This was probably offered as a way to ‘help the military’ and build political support among the large military and veteran presence in NC. Once established then others could use same process.
Overseas voters are entitled to vote in federal elections in the state they have the most connection to. So if they’ve never lived in the USA they can vote in state where their parents once lived. Thus they have to be registered there, and the state is required to accept their registrations and mail them ballots. But they’re not entitled to vote in state elections, and these few hundred voters did.
They should have also required curing the other 60,000 ballots. Since when does a law become invalid just because it hasn’t been enforced for a while.
Yesterday I went 10 mph over the speed limit and didn’t get pulled over. Does that mean I don’t get a ticket if I do the same today and do get pulled over?
If a unanimous court, especially one with a heavy Republican majority, decides something that doesn’t make sense to you, you should assume it probably has a reason, and should look for that reason before condemning it.
In this case the reason is stated clearly in the linked article:
Based on this excerpt, we are talking about voters whose actual identities are not in doubt, and the defects in whose registrations are described as merely “technical”. So the court’s precedent is to count them; it’s not reasonable to expect the court to overturn a long-standing precedent just because in this instance it’s politically convenient.
I fully expect D’s to win 100% of close elections like this.
They’ll find a way, by any means necessary.
Interesting that it always comes down to a bunch of votes by people with, let’s say, highly questionable registrations. Then, predictably, they decide they can’t disenfranchise those people whose registration is probably illegitimate.
There’s nothing suspicious about that. Of course it always comes down to suspect registrations, simply because those are the ones that are always held back and not counted until the end, when a decision must be made about them. So if an election is close those votes will by definition always be the ones still in the balance at the end.
the only way the voting process in thee (whole) United States will be restored to health is to re
to continue:
require annual registration with fingerprints and photograph taken at registration for voting privileges
(apologies: the machine is acting up)
Annual is probably too frequent, and would be an unwarranted burden on the franchise. But it doesn’t seem too much to require reregistration at least occasionally, perhaps once every ten years. At least it should be required once, since the rolls are so unreliable at the moment.
Same song, different verse. Large numbers of questionable ballots in D+70 or so district get counted, while any R+ districts get ballots tossed left and right until the D wins.
This is not the case here. These are votes that the R challenged, and the Ds defended, which means both parties agree they’re likely to support the D.
I do remember reading an article during election season that Dems were having a big drive to register people living outside the country. Sounds like it was definitely true.
Not just Dems. There was a big drive, but I think both sides were running it.
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