North Carolina Supreme Court Republican Candidate Concedes After Lengthy Court Battle
“While I do not fully agree with the District Court’s analysis, I respect the court’s holding, just as I have respected every judicial tribunal that has heard this case. I will not appeal the court’s decision.”
Though rulings from both the North Carolina Court of Appeals and the state’s highest court last month were, on balance, in his favor, the Republican candidate in the 2024 NC Supreme Court race conceded Wednesday, ending a months-long court battle.
Citing a Monday ruling by a federal judge that took issue with the NC Supreme Court’s ruling and which ordered the State Board of Elections to certify Democrat Justice Allison Riggs’ 734-vote lead, barring an appeal within seven days, NC Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin announced he would not appeal the decision:
“While I do not fully agree with the District Court’s analysis, I respect the court’s holding — just as I have respected every judicial tribunal that has heard this case,” Griffin said in a statement from his campaign. “I will not appeal the court’s decision.”
“This effort has always been about upholding the rule of law and making sure that every legal vote in an election is counted,” Griffin wrote.
“I am thankful that our Supreme Court affirmed the holding from our Court of Appeals, recognizing that the North Carolina State Board of Elections failed to follow our Constitution and the laws enacted by our General Assembly,” Griffin added. “The courts have affirmed that Voter ID is required for all absentee ballots and that you must be a resident of North Carolina to vote in North Carolina elections. These holdings are very significant for securing our state’s elections.”
🚨BREAKING: Jefferson Griffin has conceded to Allison Riggs in the State Supreme Court race, says he will not appeal. pic.twitter.com/43LtZnooNl
— Brayden Falls (@BraydenRFalls) May 7, 2025
Though Griffin could have appealed, he would have had to do so before a left-leaning court that had previously rejected his challenges: The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Though this case has been batted around in both state and federal courts since December, at times concurrently, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Myers from the Eastern District of NC – a Trump appointee – effectively put the brakes on Griffin’s challenges Monday on due process and equal protection grounds:
“IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the 1. Retroactive invalidation of absentee ballots cast by overseas military and civilian voters violates those voters’ substantive due process rights; 2. The cure process violates the equal protection rights of overseas military and civilian voters; and 3. The lack of any notice or opportunity for eligible voters to contest their mistaken designation as Never Residents violates procedural due process and represents an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote,” Myers wrote.
“IT IS FURTHER ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the State Board SHALL NOT take any action in furtherance of the North Carolina Court of Appeals and Supreme Court’s orders,” Myers added.
“The State Board SHALL certify the results of the election … based on the tally at the completion of the canvassing period on December 10, 2024,” Myers wrote, confirming Riggs’ lead.
Federal District Court Judge Richard Earnest Myers II has ruled in favor of Allison Riggs, marking an end (probably) to the North Carolina Supreme Court saga.
The NC Election Board is instructed to take no action to cure military and overseas ballots. Instead, it is advised that… pic.twitter.com/t25aMF4i9S
— Michael Pruser (@MichaelPruser) May 6, 2025
Though one of Griffin’s chief arguments was that the Democrat-controlled State Board of Elections’ interpretations of state election law had run afoul of state law and the state constitution, Myers’ argument in a nutshell seemed to be that Griffin was trying to change the election rules after the election had been held.
“You don’t change them after the game is done,” he said in his ruling, where he also expressed concern about the “public confidence” in the judicial and election processes, respectively, should Griffin prevail.
Initially, Griffin had challenged the validity of around 65,000 ballots, claiming the lion’s share of them lacked the necessary voter registration information and/or photo ID. The photo ID issue was related to overseas/military ballots, including “Never Residents” who have never lived in North Carolina.
The NC Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 decision on April 4th that Griffin’s challenges were valid. The State Board of Elections was to notify county boards of election to inform impacted voters whose registration info was incomplete or who did not include photo IDs that they had 15 business days to get things corrected and verified, or their votes would not count. They also ordered the 267 “Never Residents” votes to be tossed, “because they’re ineligible under state residency laws.”
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. The NC Supreme Court then narrowed the challenges down to the “Never Resident” ballots, which they agreed should be thrown out, and roughly 5,500 overseas ballots, ruling that they be cured within 30 days or be tossed out, a decision which brought us to where we are today.
Though this is obviously not what Griffin nor the NCGOP wanted, there are some silver linings.
With a newly-installed (as of this week) GOP-controlled State Board of Elections, Myers not touching the NC Court of Appeals’ interpretations of state election laws in his ruling potentially could lead to updates and clarifications to board of election databases and state election laws on voter registration information and photo ID requirements, all of which would increase election security.
Riggs’ victory will be officially certified on May 13th, according to the State Board of Elections.
-Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter/X.-
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Use RICO to permanently abolish the democrat crime cabal
The conspiracy to import millions of criminal migrants including the emptying of foreign prison and mental institutions is an act of war and is sufficient to use RICO to permanently abolish the democrat crime cabal.
They do not have the personality characteristics to hold public office or professional licenses
The key to election security and integrity is in maintaining a ‘clean’ voter registry. That is where the most bang for the buck can be implemented by average folks. Get a.copy of the voter registry and compare the addresses to the property tax rolls. There will be instances where a large.# of voters are registered with a physical address that isn’t plausible, a dozen or more registered.to a studio apartment. Could be a commercial address or a vacant lot. Three are low hanging fruit but there isn’t an incentive to purge these fraudulent voter registrations without outside pressure. A little funding and a larger set.of.data.can be used for comparison; postal address changes, the voter rolls of other States as two examples.
NC State Board of Elections was just put under the Republican State Auditor, Dave Boliek. He is going to start auditing Democrat cesspools.
Expect crooked Federal Judges to start hitting the Boliek like a pinata. But, he is tough enough to take it.
“With a newly-installed (as of this week) GOP-controlled State Board of Elections”
Yeah, just don’t forget the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has been almost exclusively Republican for the past 25 years, but that’s just a shiny badge.
Trump appointed district judge, with a ruling like this? A RINO conservative that thinks he should be “principled” while the left is ideological? Or paid by Qatar?
NC was handling the challenge in a reasonable way, and I don’t see why the federal judge stepped in.
He didn’t “step in”. Judges can’t do that. Riggs brought suit before him, so he had to hear it and decide based on his honest view of the law and the facts.
But, he effectively shut down the attempt to clean up the foreign voter rolls.
The problem here was the timing of the challenge to the validity of the registrations. It occurred AFTER ballots were accepted as ‘valid’. Had they been challenged prior to the election with a by name list and the deficiency then it would have succeeded. Alternatively a challenge as the individual ballots were received would also have worked.
Once received the unchallenged ballots basically have a presumption of validity. That was the hurdle b/c the challenger wanted to retroactively disqualify the ballots which were already accepted, without challenge until after the fact. Any CT gonna be extremely reluctant to do that.
The takeaway is to clean up the voter registration rolls before the election. Then make sure you have volunteers in place with the needed information to make the necessary challenges as the ballots are received and before they are placed into the ‘unchallenged’ pile of ballots.
so pam bondi now needs to challenge the nc supremes validity to do what they did
basis?
b/c lefty says the laws are fluid
oh ,, we dont want to lower ourselves to their level????
then you dont want to win
Where is the Queen Lara Trump?
She stepped down from Jer position at the RNC.
Translation: This court is aware of the 65,000 dubious votes w/o ID, and the importance of lawful votes – however we’re not going to do a damn thing about it.
I cannot share a country with these people.
That won’t last. In a future situation like this the #Resistance Federal judge will happily flip-flop in order to seat the Communist candidate. And Oceania has always been at war with Eura-, ah, Eastasia.
As expected.
D’s win 100% of these.
R Party never fights to win. Meanwhile, the D’s will do absolutely everything, legal or illegal, to win every single time.
Enough people need to realize that playing by the rules is silly if the enemy isn’t playing by the rules.
It does seem curious that a federal judge can overrule a state supreme court in an issue involving validity of that state’s election to a state office.
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