NC Supreme Court race FAQ: Breaking down the legal battle between Griffin and Riggs

The 2024 election for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court is still undecided, as the losing candidate tries to have tens of thousands of votes thrown out — an attempt to tilt the outcome of the election in his favor.

It’s a complex situation that affects all 11 million people in the state — whether they’re among the challenged voters, or even if they’re someone who has never voted but whose life could change by the decisions handed down by the state’s highest court, which takes up high-profile cases focused on everything from voting rules to public school funding.

Here’s a breakdown of where things stand, what could happen next, what to do if you’re one of the voters being challenged, and why it all matters.

Who won the race?

Technically nobody has “won” the race — yet. Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs received more votes than Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin, based on initial election results and two recounts. At last count, Riggs had 734 more votes than Griffin. But the North Carolina State Board of Elections hasn’t certified the race yet. It’s the only unresolved 2024 race in the state.

If Riggs has more votes, why hasn’t the board certified the race?

The State Supreme Court won’t allow it to be certified yet, in order to give Griffin time to challenge the eligibility of 60,000 voters who cast ballots in the race. The decision to block certification came down Tuesday in a 4-2 ruling from the court.

What’s the argument for challenging these voters?

Griffin has a few reasons why he thinks the voters in question should’ve been ruled ineligible. In most of the cases, he alleges that the state doesn’t have identifying information for those voters and therefore can’t be 100% certain they are who they say they are.

Even though the people were allowed to vote in 2024, Griffin says they really should’ve been deemed ineligible to vote. He wants a court to retroactively decide their votes shouldn’t have been counted.

State elections officials rejected his challenge, with the head of the State Board of Elections calling it "anathema to the democratic system." Now Griffin, who is a judge on the state Court of Appeals, is challenging the board’s decision in court. If Griffin succeeds in his effort to toss the 60,000 votes, it’s anyone’s guess as to who would wind up being declared the winner. He has said in court filings he thinks he would end up the winner.

Who will make the decision?

It’s unclear who will ultimately rule on Griffin’s challenge. But that could determine who wins the race. Riggs and the Democratic-majority state elections board want the case to be heard in federal court — in part because federal judges in previous cases have rejected the main legal theory Griffin is relying on.

Griffin, however, wants his case to be heard by the state Supreme Court — the very court he’s trying to join. He contends that state election disputes should be decided by state judges, not in federal court. Republicans hold a 5-2 majority on the court and the GOP majority has a history of ruling in favor of Republican interests in recent cases involving elections.

So far, the lawsuit has ping-ponged back and forth. Griffin originally filed in state court, but then it got kicked up to federal court, but then a judge sent it back to state court, and now it’s back in federal court. On Friday, the the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit decided to keep the case. It scheduled oral arguments for Jan. 27.

Is it a conflict of interest for the state Supreme Court to hear the case?

The case could directly affect the court’s membership and political balance, leading some to wonder if state Supreme Court justices should be allowed to rule on it. But the court appears not to share those concerns. Riggs — who remains on the bench while the case is decided — has recused herself from this case. But none of her colleagues have done the same — and there’s technically nothing that requires them to. North Carolina has fairly lax ethics rules for judges and justices, and if one declines to recuse from a case, that’s typically the final word on it. The state Supreme Court explicitly ruled in 2021 that its justices can’t be forced to recuse themselves if they don’t want to, no matter what arguments exist on the other side.

What are the arguments in favor of throwing out ballots?

Griffin and fellow Republicans have cited multiple reasons why they think the 60,000 voters they’re challenging should have their ballots thrown out. The main one is based on a federal law that requires states to confirm voters’ identities by collecting their driver’s license or Social Security numbers. There are about 225,000 registered voters who are missing that information, including the 60,000 whose 2024 ballots Griffin is challenging. In some cases it seems to stem from errors made by government workers. In other cases it stems from issues such as people getting married or divorced and changing their name.

Griffin is also challenging about 1,500 overseas voters. State law doesn’t require voters living in other countries, such as soldiers on deployment, to show a photo identification to vote. North Carolina also allows U.S. citizens living overseas to vote in North Carolina if their parents voted here, even if they themselves have never lived in North Carolina — for example, the children of soldiers or religious missionaries. Griffin says the state is wrong to allow ballots in either of those circumstances, and he want all those votes thrown out, too.

Is Griffin challenging all of the voters with these issues?

No. He’s only challenging some of them — which has raised concerns from critics who say the courts shouldn’t be allowed to treat certain voters differently than others.

For the voters with missing information, Griffin is only challenging people who cast ballots by mail or during early voting. He’s not challenging anyone who voted on Election Day itself. That’s likely because the state handles early and mail-in ballots differently than it does Election Day ballots. Election Day ballots aren’t tracked the same way that absentee ballots are. But it also works out to Griffin’s advantage politically: In North Carolina, people who vote on Election Day tend to lean Republican, and people who vote by mail or in early voting tend to lean Democratic.

Those trends held in this race, too: Griffin won Election Day voters with 53% of the vote, and Riggs was favored by 51% of early and mail-in voters. Since more people voted absentee than voted on Election Day, Riggs received more votes overall. But since Griffin’s challenge targets only absentee voters and not Election Day voters, it likely would disproportionately throw out the ballots of Riggs supporters.

What’s the argument against throwing these ballots out?

Everyone who Griffin is challenging was deemed eligible to vote in 2024 — not only before the election as part of a federal lawsuit but also again in December, by the State Board of Elections, which shot down Griffin’s post-election requests to throw out the ballots.

Riggs, state elections officials and Democratic Party leaders say there’s simply no evidence to back up Griffin’s claim that these voters should’ve been deemed ineligible. Federal courts have also already ruled against the argument Griffin is posing against the larger group of voters — those with missing Social Security or driver’s license numbers. The Republican Party sued during the 2024 election making the same legal arguments to try to block the people in question from voting. Federal judges shot down that effort, ruling that the people in question should be allowed to vote.

Critics say it would set a troubling precedent to throw out the ballots at this point, since it would equate to the government telling people they can vote only to then turn around after the election, change the rules, and retroactively punish them for not following those rules that didn’t exist at the time.

Why this race?

A large part of it is just due to electoral math. Few other races were decided by a close enough margin that the results would feasibly change if these ballots were thrown out. Additionally, the stakes are high for Supreme Court elections. Local and national political groups, lawyers, business interests and others have spent tens of millions of dollars in recent years trying to influence North Carolina Supreme Court elections. They wouldn’t spend that kind of money if the court wasn’t powerful. In addition to hearing appeals in criminal cases, child custody disputes and other run-of-the-mill legal issues, the Supreme Court also decides multi-billion-dollar business lawsuits and sweeping political cases. It has also been the center of a case focused on who can authorize public education funding in the state.

What happens to other close races if the votes do get thrown out?

Probably nothing. All the other elections in the state have already been certified. So even if Griffin wins and gets these 60,000-plus ballots thrown out, and if there are enough changes to have potentially changed the results in another election, it’s too late — at least based on the way state elections officials interpret the rules. It’s always possible that a court could decide to go with a new interpretation of the rules and try to overturn results of elections that have already been certified.

Some losing Republican candidates for state legislative seats did join in on Griffin’s challenge for a while. But those were longer-shot efforts, due to the smaller number of votes in their specific districts, and they’ve since dropped their challenges so that the state could certify their Democratic opponents as the winner in those races. One of them was a state House race that officially broke the GOP’s veto-proof supermajority in the North Carolina General Assembly.

Can I find out if my vote is being challenged?

Yes. It’s a public record who Griffin is targeting. The original data, from the State Board of Elections, isn’t very user-friendly. It exists in hundreds of individual spreadsheets broken down in granular detail. Some private individuals have since made it more easily searchable — including Apex Town Councilman Terry Mahaffey, a software engineer who created a website to let people search for a specific name or download the data in a single spreadsheet.

What can I do if I’m on the list?

At this point, there might not be a whole lot you can do — although some affected voters have been conducting media interviews or posting on social media in an attempt to raise awareness.

The State Board of Elections is also suggesting that people on the list contact their county elections board offices and ask to update their information. But while that could protect them from being ruled ineligible in a future election, it’s unclear if updating their information now would also protect their 2024 ballot from being thrown out if Griffin wins this lawsuit. The exact details, such as if your vote will be counted or if you’ll be required to re-register to vote, will be up to whichever court makes the final decision on this case.