Political war rages over North Carolina court race

A political war has erupted over a state Supreme Court race in North Carolina more than two months after Democrats appeared to narrowly clinch the seat.

Justice Allison Riggs, the Democratic incumbent, finished just 734 votes ahead of her Republican challenger, Jefferson Griffin, with more than 5 million votes cast in the race — making it one of the closest in the country. But a lawsuit from Griffin has prevented the state elections board from certifying Riggs as the winner after two recounts confirmed her lead.

Now Democrats are up in arms about what they say amounts to a GOP attempt to overturn the results and steal a seat on the court.

“It is bigger than just one race in North Carolina,” North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton told reporters at a press conference. “We’re talking about a calculated effort by a sitting judge to throw out votes and reject the results of a fair and free election.”

The saga has continued for months without resolution, even as other successful candidates have already begun their terms across the country.

The state Supreme Court currently has a 5-2 Republican majority, with Riggs and one other justice in the minority. But several of the justices won their most recent elections by razor-thin margins, and polling showed the Riggs-Griffin contest was likely to be close.

Once the votes were initially counted, Riggs came out ahead, but by a much smaller margin than the 0.5-point threshold required for a candidate to be allowed to request a recount. That recount maintained Riggs’s 734-vote lead, and a second recount, partially done by hand, slightly increased her margin. 

The state elections board declined to order a full hand recount given the boost for Riggs, but Griffin, a state appeals court judge, refused to concede, having challenged the validity of 60,000 votes cast in the race. 

Griffin’s argument is multifaceted, but he’s challenging most of the ballots on grounds that they didn’t include their driver’s license or Social Security number on their voter registration form. The elections board rejected Griffin’s protests mostly on party-line votes, but he asked the state Supreme Court to prevent the board from certifying the vote, which it did two weeks ago. 

The court, with Riggs recused, set a briefing schedule throughout January for the case to proceed. Meanwhile, the state Democratic Party has filed a federal lawsuit to try to ensure the 60,000 votes remain counted. 

Embry Wood Owen, Riggs’s campaign manager, said in a statement that “it is long past time” for Riggs’s win to be certified, arguing that the challenge “does not just imperil Justice Riggs’s seat.”

“If Griffin succeeds, North Carolinians will no longer be able to walk out of the voting booth with any certainty that their votes will count,” Owens said. “What's at stake here is public confidence in our judiciary and in our elections.” 

Griffin declined to comment, citing ethical concerns. 

“I am not allowed to comment on pending litigation,” he said. “It would be a violation of our NC Code of Judicial Conduct for me to do so.” 

The state GOP maintained that ballots were counted that shouldn’t have been, and the elections board isn’t enforcing the law. 

“Democrats are sticking to hollow talking points and incendiary rhetoric designed to preserve an outcome,” said Matt Mercer, communications director for the state GOP. “We are committed to fighting for the voices of legal votes to be heard in this contest.” 

But more recently Griffin has focused on challenging the validity of about 5,500 ballots from military and overseas voters who didn’t present a photo ID upon voting. The challenge focuses on four heavily Democratic counties, and a freelance journalist found Democrats were five times likelier to have their ballots tossed out in this challenge. 

But the state elections board has unanimously ruled that these voters are exempt from North Carolina’s voter ID law. Griffin himself also reportedly voted this way in 2019 and 2020 as a member of the Army National Guard. 

Voters who are among the 60,000 being challenged said they've never had any issue with their vote being counted in the years they’ve been voting, and they’ve still not been informed how to correct any issue. 

A 2002 state law requires voters to include their driver’s license or Social Security number on their registration application, but the form didn’t specify they needed to include that information until last year. Transcription errors may also explain why that information is missing from voter databases. 

Gabby Chiarenza, who works as a legislative assistant to a Democratic state House member, said she voted early in person for the November election and provided her photo ID to confirm her identity. But she later found her name on a list of voters being challenged. 

“My vote is basically hanging in the balance of what either the state Supreme Court or the federal court wants to decide with this legal theory that [Griffin is] proposing,” she said. 

Christy Clausell, an unaffiliated voter who has been registered to vote in North Carolina for more than a decade, said she reached out to both parties after receiving mail informing her of her vote being challenged. The Democratic Party explained what was happening, but the GOP didn’t respond to an email and voicemail. 

“It's just the fact that I voted in every single election for the past 14 years, and I've never had an issue, and making an issue after [Griffin] loses is telling,” she said. 

Democrats expressed confidence that Riggs’s victory will be affirmed, but Republicans have vowed to see their challenges through. The GOP has said voters aren’t to blame for the issues, but that doesn’t overshadow them. 

“Judge Griffin is fighting to ensure election integrity and resolution of these issues in a fair manner," said state GOP Chair Jason Simmons this month.