The election for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court remained too close to call Monday. Nearly all votes have been counted, but the few remaining ballots could swing the results. Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs was leading Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin by 66 votes Monday evening. There were 5.5 million ballots cast in the race.
The margin could change as the final votes are tallied; five of the state's 100 counties had yet to finalize their results as of 6 p.m. Monday. Whoever ends up on the losing end will have little time to decide whether to call for a recount. The deadline to do so is Tuesday.
Other WRAL Top Stories
Because of the quickly approaching deadline, Griffin sued the North Carolina State Board of Elections on Monday. Joined by the North Carolina Republican Party in the effort, Griffin said he was seeking access to state records about ballots cast. The NCGOP and Griffin's campaign appear to be preparing for a legal fight over whether some ballots were improperly counted, perhaps in instances of alleged voter fraud.
Late Monday afternoon, the NCGOP sent a news release blasting the elections board for "slow-walking critical information." But minutes later, according to emails obtained by WRAL, the GOP lawyers informed court officials that they no longer planned to seek a hearing in the lawsuit. A spokesman for the elections board said no hearing was needed because the elections board had already given them the records the lawsuit had sought.
"Within a half hour of blasting their press release, they canceled all plans to have a hearing on their lawsuit," the election board's top attorney, Paul Cox, wrote as part of that email thread. "They just want to create a bogeyman in the media."
The board's spokesman, Pat Gannon, said the state GOP's lawyers contacted elections officials on Saturday to ask for records to be provided by 7 a.m. Monday at the latest. He said even though there's no legal requirement for the elections board to provide those records on that kind of fast turnaround, elections officials nevertheless worked to get the GOP officials those documents by Monday.
"The State Board provided the requested records today," Gannon said. "In fact, the lawyers for this campaign were informed this morning that the records would be provided today, but they served the agency with the lawsuit anyway. In sum, this lawsuit is thoroughly unnecessary."
Vote counting delays
Most but not all of the state's 100 counties were on time and finished counting their remaining provisional ballots Friday, in the "canvass" process set up in state law that gives counties 10 days after an election to conduct investigations into those ballots to determine which ones to count or to reject.
Provisional ballots are cast by people whose eligibility to vote isn't 100% clear. It includes people who came to the polls without a valid photo identification, people who went to the wrong precinct to vote on election day, or who ran into other issues when they showed up to vote.
As of late Monday, five counties had yet to finish their canvass process: Craven, Dare, Duplin, Forsyth and Northampton counties.
The State Board of Elections might, however, soon be asked to call off the race for Supreme Court altogether and order a redo of the contest between Riggs and Griffin. That's what Lee County resident Jay DeLancy is asking for, claiming that state officials don't have a foolproof way of knowing that all voters are citizens.
DeLancy, who runs a group that looks for voting irregularities, filed a complaint late last week with the Wake County Board of Elections, asking for a do-over of the Supreme Court race.
During a meeting Monday to discuss that complaint, Wake County officials appeared confused about why he filed the complaint with them. They said his complaint appeared to mischaracterize key points or lack evidence for other key points, but that even if they did agree with him, they wouldn't have the ability to grant his request of a new election.
They dismissed his complaint and said he could appeal it to the State Board of Elections if he wanted to pursue it. DeLancy told WRAL on Monday he expected the Wake board to dismiss his complaint but that it was a necessary step to be able to bring it before the state board.
He and other election integrity activists say there are hundreds of thousands of people registered to vote in North Carolina who didn't provide their driver's license or Social Security number when they registered to vote. That's required now, but it wasn't always required. DeLancy said he has records showing tens of thousands of people lacking that data voted in the 2024 elections; he suspects they might be illegal voters.
"North Carolina's election laws allow election protests to be filed whenever the number of illegal votes cast exceeds the margin of victory in any election," DeLancy said. "While we found several [state legislative] races within the margin, I decided to protest the lone statewide race affected by the [board of elections] lawlessness, the Griffin-Riggs contest."
DeLancy's complaint is highly similar to a claim that the State Board of Elections already dismissed earlier this year, in a unanimous and bipartisan vote.
Similar claims were also the basis for a lawsuit filed this year by the North Carolina Republican Party. Federal District Court Judge Richard Myers II, a judicial appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, rejected that Republican Party lawsuit before the election. Wake County elections board member Greg Flynn noted that fact when voting Monday to dismiss DeLancy's complaint.
“The core of this protest is a matter that’s in front of federal courts," Flynn said, adding: "I don’t find any merit in the claims."