NC elections officials were right to reject GOP challenges to 65,000 ballots, Wake judge rules

State elections officials were right to reject Jefferson Griffin’s attempts to throw out tens of thousands of North Carolina voters’ ballots from the 2024 elections, a Wake County judge ruled Friday, just hours after hearing arguments in the closely watched case.

Lawyers for Griffin — the Republican candidate who trailed in his effort to defeat Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs for a seat on the state Supreme Court — said during a Friday hearing that there was valid legal reasoning behind his challenges.

But Wake County Superior Court Judge William Pittman disagreed, ruling that the elections board did nothing wrong when it rejected Griffin’s efforts to throw out the ballots. The board rejected Griffin’s challenges in a series of votes in December, which has since led to a sprawling legal battle in state and federal courts.

Griffin had 734 fewer votes than Riggs after multiple recounts. But Griffin alleged that tens of thousands of people who cast ballots shouldn't have been deemed eligible to vote, and that others violated state laws when voting. He previously asked the North Carolina State Board of Elections to toss their ballots. The board rejected his request in December, which led to Griffin’s appeal in court.

On Friday, Riggs celebrated the judge's decision. However, due to a recent state Supreme Court ruling, neither candidate may be declared the winner until all legal appeals are finished. She has repeatedly called on Griffin to concede defeat.

"Today’s decisions denying Judge Griffin’s challenges of more than 65,000 ballots are a victory for North Carolina voters and the rule of law," Riggs wrote in a statement after the ruling. "Voters decide elections, and I remain committed to seeing this fight through and upholding North Carolinians’ constitutional freedoms."

The elections board has a Democratic majority, and most of the votes in December against Griffin’s various requests came down along partisan lines, although one of the votes was unanimous and bipartisan. Pittman, the judge, is also a Democrat. Griffin is likely to now appeal the ruling in North Carolina's appellate courts, which are controlled by fellow Republicans.

"We are confident this decision will be appealed and we will continue to support Judge Griffin in his pursuit of election integrity," North Carolina Republican Party spokesman Matt Mercer said.

The hearing Friday — and the quick-turn ruling — are just the latest steps in what is expected to be a drawn-out appeal to the election board’s decision. The case has dragged on. A hearing that could have happened months ago was delayed due to a series of appeals lodged by both sides in state and federal courts over his challenge.

The outcome of the race is being watched nationally because of the unique elements of the case, as well as the stakes. Griffin is expected to appeal; he ultimately wants the state Supreme Court to rule on a case that would determine who sits on that very court. If Griffin wins, Republicans would increase their majority on the court to 6-1. The case also deals with a legal argument that has been rejected at the federal level. Some legal observers think it has a chance to rise to the U.S. Supreme Court, although for now it’s moving forward solely in state courts.

The majority of people Griffin is challenging are voters whose identifying information — a driver's license or Social Security number — is missing from a state database that's required to track voters' identities. He’s also challenging several thousand ballots cast by military and overseas voters.

Griffin says the voters either broke election rules, or that their identities can't be 100% confirmed.

Terence Steed, a state deputy attorney general representing the elections board, said during Friday’s hearing that Griffin’s claim is false and urged the judge to throw out Griffin's request. "There is an interlocking and overlapping web of security and reliability built into our election system," Steed said. "It would be entirely inequitable to disenfranchise voters based upon what are at most technical errors, not the fault of the voter."

Griffin alleges that thousands of voters broke the law — but he’s not challenging every ballot. His campaign is targeting only some voters who fall into the categories he's raising concerns about.

Records show the voters he challenged disproportionately come from counties and demographics that lean Democratic. While it's a secret how they actually voted, Griffin has written in court filings that he expects to win the race if he succeeds in throwing out the ballots.

Craig Schauer, a lawyer for Griffin, defended the decision to only challenge some — but not all — voters during the hearing on Friday. He said there are valid and non-political reasons for that.

For the roughly 60,000 challenged voters with missing information, Griffin challenged only people who voted by mail or during early voting. He didn't challenge anyone who voted on Election Day itself. In North Carolina, Election Day voters tend to be more pro-Republican than average. People who vote early or by mail tend to be more pro-Democrat than average.

‘Treating them differently’

The State Board of Elections says Griffin's partial challenge would create an unfair system in which voters are treated with different rules depending purely on what day they went to vote — and without the ability to know about that beforehand.

Schauer said Friday that the state handles Election Day ballots differently than other ballots in terms of being able to pull those ballots after the fact. Therefore, he said, it should be OK for Griffin not to challenge any Election Day voters for breaking the same rules he's targeting among other voters.

"The two groups of voters are situated differently, so treating them differently makes sense," Schauer said.

Separate challenges by Griffin, against military and overseas voters, apply to roughly 5,500 people registered in just four counties: The large, Democratic-leaning counties of Buncombe, Forsyth, Guilford and New Hanover. Schauer said the Griffin campaign considered challenging overseas voters from two other counties as well but didn't receive the necessary data from those counties before the deadline to file the protests against voters there. He didn't explain, however, why the Griffin campaign didn't attempt to file challenges in all 100 counties, most of which are Republican-leaning.

Steed, the elections board lawyer, said Friday that Griffin had the right to try filing challenges but has failed to show any reason why that effort should succeed.

"Judge Griffin, like any other candidate, is within his right to use this process," Steed told the judge. "But what he cannot do is use protests to disenfranchise voters who follow long-established laws."

Riggs has also intervened in the lawsuit, seeking to defend her seat. Her attorney, Raymond Bennett, said in court Friday that Griffin's challenges are bad for democracy and should be thrown out in court.

"Judge Griffin concedes that not a single voter was ineligible based on the rules that were in place at the time of the election," Bennett said. “Now he wants to change those rules. … That kind of retroactive disenfranchisement is fundamentally unfair. It's anti-democratic, and it violates state law.”

'A slap in the face'

While the arguments in the courtroom focused on formal legal protests against people's ballots, outside the courtroom more than 100 anti-Griffin protesters gathered Friday in the hallways or on the sidewalk outside, holding signs with messages including "Stop The Steal" and "Griffin Concede."

Also at the courthouse were about a dozen pro-Griffin demonstrators, including state Republican Party Chairman Jason Simmons. "We appreciate the courts listening and hearing the arguments and being able to make a decision, and we'll celebrate the decision one way or the other," Simmons said.

Griffin declined to comment after the hearing, keeping with his view that it's improper for sitting judges to comment on pending litigation.

After the hearing, Riggs greeted protesters, promising to uphold voting rights, and to seek "accountability for any elected official who would disregard the solemn oath that we all take to uphold, maintain and defend the state and federal Constitution."

Many of the protesters were among those who could have their ballots thrown out if Griffin ultimately wins on appeal.

Felix Soto, an 18-year-old from Oak Ridge, said he cast his ballot from overseas while on a three-month service trip to Costa Rica, even contacting Guilford County elections officials multiple times to make sure he had done everything right. "And then my mom hits me with the news, 'You're on a list,'" Soto said. "And I was like, 'Which list? CIA? TSA? Goodness.' But it was the list of protested ballots that Judge Griffin sent out. And to be serious, that was a slap in the face. Because I worked so hard to get my ballot in."

Griffin is challenging Soto's ballot because he didn't provide identification when he voted. But state law only requires photo identification for people who vote in person or by mail from inside the U.S., and not for people who vote from overseas. Schauer said Friday that the state legislature probably meant to require overseas voters to show ID, too. Steed said all that matters is that the law doesn't require overseas voters to show ID.

In court, Steed pointed out that the elections board passed an administrative rule before the 2024 elections explicitly stating overseas voters didn't need to show ID, and that the rule was never challenged by Griffin, the Republican Party or anyone else before passing with unanimous approval at the state's Rules Review Commission — a board made up entirely of political appointees hand-picked by the same GOP legislative leaders who wrote the state's voter ID laws.

Other protesters Friday said they didn’t know their registrations had missing or errant information.

"I've voted for nine years fine," Raleigh resident Mary Kay Heling said. "I voted early. I showed my driver's license. I don't understand why he wants to take my vote."

Complex legal maneuvering

As Griffin's case plays out, the pre-election status quo has remained in place: Riggs has been allowed to continue serving on the Supreme Court, and Griffin has retained his seat on the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

Under state law, Griffin was supposed to appeal his rejection by the elections board to Wake County Superior Court.

Griffin attempted to skip that process and take his case straight to the North Carolina Supreme Court, where his fellow Republicans hold a 5-2 majority. At the same time, the elections board — as well as Riggs and voting rights groups that have since gotten involved in the lawsuit — tried bringing the case out of state court and into federal court.

Federal courts have already rejected the main legal theory behind Griffin's challenges, ruling in October that many of the people he's challenging were indeed eligible to vote. But Griffin won a victory last week when a federal appeals court ruled that his case should remain out of federal court, at least for now.

In court Friday, Schauer acknowledged that federal courts rejected those arguments in October. But the courts based that reasoning on legal precedent that frowns on major changes to election rules from happening too close to the date of the election. That precedent says nothing about making challenges after the election is over, Schauer said.

Bennett, the lawyer for Riggs, said that's only because strategy like Griffin's "has not been tried in the past."

"You can't gamble on an election, see that you lost, then — after you lose — try to undo the results by changing the rules," Bennett said.

Griffin's side, however, says there is precedent for throwing out ballots after the election is over. Schauer pointed to a case from the early 2000s in which a judge ruled that voters who didn't follow the proper rules should have their ballots thrown out, even though the reason they broke the rules was because of faulty information from elections officials.

That's the only case that either side has found on similar issues, according to Schauer, who said it should set precedent for Griffin's attempts to do something similar now.

WRAL Capitol Bureau Chief Laura Leslie contributed to this report.