A group represented by a lawyer with ties to former President Donald Trump says North Carolina’s 2022 election results are unreliable due in part to voting machine errors, alleging in court documents that elections officials violated federal laws designed to guarantee election integrity.
It’s part of a national strategy questioning election results in almost two dozen states — an effort that critics say promotes misinformation and stokes doubt about the electoral process.
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United Sovereign Americans and Franklinton resident Richard Yost made the allegations Wednesday in a petition filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. The petition names the North Carolina State Board of Elections, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland as respondents.
The Chesterfield, Missouri-based group, which has filed lawsuits questioning vote integrity in other states, alleges that in 2022 North Carolina encountered a rate of voting machine errors that was higher than federal law allows — enough to call into question the veracity of the count. It said it brought the alleged issues to state elections officials, but they “did nothing to investigate those apparent errors before certifying the election.” The group also questioned voter registrations.
United Sovereign Americans says North Carolina officials haven’t done enough to ensure the 2024 election results will be reliable and that only a court can ensure that federal elections standards are followed. “If the 2022 election performance is repeated in 2024, petitioners and all North Carolina voters will suffer damages,” the group said in its filing. The group is asking the court to ensure that “all votes properly cast are counted correctly” in future state elections.
A spokesman for the North Carolina elections board declined to comment on the petition on Thursday. A spokesperson for the state attorney general’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
United Sovereign Americans, which describes itself as a nonpartisan fair elections organization, is represented by Bruce Castor, the former Pennsylvania attorney general who was a defense attorney for Trump during his second impeachment trial. Trump was impeached for actions leading up to and during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riots, during which Trump supporters sought to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory. Castor is also representing the group in similar legal actions in Pennsylvania, Texas, Maryland and Ohio. The group says it is pursuing cases in about 20 states.
In North Carolina, every county board of elections hand counts samples of ballots after every election. Those hand counts routinely show that electronic ballot tabulators count votes accurately. Elections officials routinely say that while voting irregularities can occur, they’re not widespread and likely would be caught by routine processes and audits.
United Sovereign Americans conceded in the filing that it wasn’t certain that any of the 2022 North Carolina races would have produced a different outcome. But it alleges that North Carolina officials can’t be certain that all winning candidates received more votes than their competitors “because the election itself was compromised by the State’s failure to conform to the requirements of federal law designed to ensure reliable election results.”
A similar effort by the group in Maryland was rejected in May by a federal judge who said the group and another plaintiff failed to prove they were adversely affected by alleged violations of election integrity laws. “The mere hypothetical possibility of a past, speculative injury does not give rise to a certainly impending injury,” Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher wrote. The group has since appealed.
Policy analysts at the Brennan Center for Justice, a unit of the New York University School of Law that focuses on election law, have described United Sovereign Americans as an election denial group and have characterized similar actions as frivolous. The center opposed the group’s Maryland lawsuit, saying in court documents that it advances false information about elections. United Sovereign Americans’ national legal strategy “appears designed to sow doubt in the integrity of election systems in advance of the 2024 election,” lawyers for the center wrote.
A spokesperson for United Sovereign Americans didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Yost, the Franklinton petitioner, also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. He is described in the petition as a Granville County election judge and the information technology manager for United Sovereign Americans. Yost, a Republican, has previously called the 2020 election results suspicious and has encouraged paper ballots in elections.
Grassroots election integrity efforts have become more common among conservatives ever since Trump made voter fraud allegations a key part of his complaints over losing the 2020 election. Trump and his supporters haven’t been able to prove those claims in court, but public polling shows many Republicans still mistrust in elections.
Fewer than half (48%) of registered North Carolina voters believe that the results of this year's election will be accurately counted nationwide, according to an Elon University poll released this week. The low percentage was largely driven by Republican sentiment, Jason Husser, the director of the Elon Poll, told WRAL this week.