Republican NC Supreme Court candidate wants GOP-led high court to toss ballots after elections board rejects protest

The Republican candidate for a contested North Carolina Supreme Court seat is now asking the high court to throw out more than 60,000 voters’ ballots from the 2024 elections — an action that could end with the court deciding whether to overturn the results in an election for one of its own members.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections rejected ballot challenges by the GOP candidate, Judge Jefferson Griffin, and several other Republican candidates last week, with board chairman Alan Hirsch saying the effort to throw out so many people’s votes “is anathema to the democratic system and simply cannot be tolerated.”

Griffin is now appealing to the state’s highest court to hold that ballots cast by people who failed to provide their drivers license number or social security number when they registered to vote, by people who represented they are a U.S. citizen but have never lived in the U.S. and by overseas voters who did not present a photo identification cannot be counted for the Supreme Court election. He claims the state elections board erred when it said Griffin’s opponent, incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs, won the race by fewer than 800 votes.

“The state [elections] board is an administrative agency that has knowingly broken the law and refused to do anything about it,” Griffin says in the filing, which was distributed by the state Republican Party. “Indeed, the Board has been breaking our election law for decades. This lawlessness was brought to the Board’s attention back in 2023, before the 2024 general election, but the Board refused to correct its errors. Now those chickens have come home to roost. In the 2024 general election, the Board’s errors changed the outcome of the election for the open seat on this Court.”

Pat Gannon, a spokesperson for the state elections board, didn’t immediately comment on the filing. Rather, he pointed to the board’s decision on the matter, which was filed late last week. “The board concluded that the protests … did not establish probable cause to believe that a violation of election law or irregularity or misconduct occurred in the protested elections,” the elections board wrote in its order.

Griffin’s filing is known as a “writ of prohibition” in legal parlance. It's an attempt to bypass the potential for a district court decision in Wake County. It raises the unusual possibility of the state Supreme Court ruling on its own membership.

The legal theory has already been rejected in federal court with a trial court judge and a federal appellate court ruling as recently as October that those voters were allowed to vote in this year’s elections. The appellate court also specifically ruled that this issue is not something state courts can rule on since the legal arguments involve federal law. Griffin disagrees and is hoping the state Supreme Court will hear his challenge regardless of those past rulings. The Supreme Court has a 5-2 Republican majority, and, in recent years, court rulings in political cases have frequently come down along party lines.

He is also asking that the court halt the elections board’s certification of the election for the Supreme Court seat and the requirement that Griffin file a petition for judicial review within 10 days of the board’s decision.

Griffin has previously told WRAL he wouldn’t comment on his campaign’s requests to throw out the ballots while those requests remain pending, since he’s a member of the state Court of Appeals.

“The State Board of Elections has not been fair or transparent, and it is by their actions alone we have no other choice than to take this step,” North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Jason Simmons said in a statement. “Judge Griffin has led efforts to seek accountability and restore integrity while the state board has been dragging its feet and ignoring the law."

Two recounts in the state Supreme Court race have reaffirmed that Riggs received more votes than Griffin. Riggs, who leads by 734 votes, has declared victory and called on Griffin to concede. He has not.

A spokesperson for Riggs didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Griffin has refused to face reality and admit that he lost the Supreme Court race to Justice Allison Riggs," Anderson Clayton, the chairwoman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, said in a statement. "Instead, he has wasted taxpayer dollars, tried to toss out the ballots of over 60,000 North Carolinians, and attempted to find any way to overturn the will of the people."

Clayton urged Griffin to concede and accused him of trying to get the GOP-controlled high court to "hand this seat to him."

It could be weeks or months before the election is resolved. What happens to Riggs’ seat in the meantime is unclear. Similar situations have been rare in state history.

Her current term ends in January. Reached earlier this week, a spokesman for the state courts system said he wasn’t sure if Riggs would be forced off the court if the case isn’t resolved in the next few weeks. If that does happen, it could create a vacancy on the court that Democratic Gov.-elect Josh Stein might be able to fill, possibly by just appointing Riggs back to her seat while the legal challenges play out.

Supermajority also at stake

The effort could also reverse the fortunes of the trailing Republican candidate in another key race — the contest for a state House district in Vance and Granville counties. After the most recent recount, Democrat Bryan Cohn appears to have defeated Republican Rep. Frank Sossamon by about 200 votes.

If that result stands, Democrats will break the GOP’s veto-proof majority in the state House of Representatives. That would give Stein substantially more leverage to negotiate with Republicans at the state legislature.

Of the tens of thousands ballots being challenged statewide, about 500 are from voters in that district, making it possible that the results could still change if ballots are thrown out. Two state Senate districts, which Democrats also appear to have narrowly won if no further vote counts are changed, could also be affected. One is a Wake County seat in which Democrat Terence Everitt leads Republican Ashlee Adams. The other is a Mecklenburg County seat in which Democrat Woodson Bradley leads Republican Stacie McGinn .

In challenging the ballots of the more than 60,000 voters, Republicans have cited half a dozen concerns, including potential felon voters or people who voted but then died before Election Day. But nearly all of the challenges — 96% of them — fall into the category of people for whom identifying data is missing in a state database.

Since the early 2000s a federal law called the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, has required states to collect voters’ Social Security or driver’s license numbers to confirm their identities. But many people who registered to vote before HAVA was enacted don’t have that information in the system. It’s also missing for others due to clerical errors made by government workers.

Before the election year, a conservative activist raised similar HAVA complaints.

The State Board of Elections, which is composed of three Democrats and two Republicans, unanimously voted to dismiss her complaint in April. Then, as the election was heating up, the state and national Republican parties sued in federal court, seeking to have 225,000 North Carolinians purged from the list of registered voters due to those HAVA claims. A federal judge rejected that effort, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld that ruling.

The latest decision from the federal appeals court came down less than two months ago. The appellate court also ruled that such issues are only for federal courts, not state courts, to decide on. Griffin’s action Wednesday had to be filed in state court due to state law. But the case could be quickly transferred to federal court. GOP officials could dispute any such effort, particularly since they’ve already lost there. They’re more likely to want to try to keep the case in state courts, where Republicans control sizable majorities on both the state Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court.

The state Democratic Party, meanwhile, has already filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to ensure that these ballot challenges are handled based on the rulings that federal courts handed down already, shooting down the GOP arguments.