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:
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⚫4,100 (likely) additional voters need curing⚫267 voters’ ballots tossedIn 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’:
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“:
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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