Judge shreds GOP attempt to undo North Carolina Supreme Court race

A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump ruled against the conservative nominee for a seat on North Carolina's state Supreme Court, saying in a scathing decision that he lost the election that took place more than six months ago and that the liberal justice's victory must be confirmed.

Conservative nominee Jefferson Griffin lost the November state Supreme Court election to liberal Justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes, but has been appealing his loss for months. 

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Griffin wanted the state board of elections to throw out 65,000 votes, arguing that those voters needed to show identification in order to have their ballots counted—even though no other candidate in North Carolina challenged the validity of those ballots.

The conservative state Supreme Court ultimately ruled that thousands of voters who either were serving in the military or lived abroad needed to "cure" their ballots and show their identification or else their votes would be thrown out.

But U.S. District Court Judge Richard Myers, who was appointed by Trump in 2019, said Griffin was improperly trying to change the rules of the election after it took place, that his challenge was bogus, and that Riggs’ victory must be certified.

“You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done,” Myers wrote. He added that, “Permitting parties to ‘upend the set rules’ of an election after the election has taken place can only produce ‘confusion and turmoil,’” which “threatens to undermine public confidence in the federal courts, state agencies, and the elections themselves."

Even some Republicans in the state had been criticizing Griffin’s effort to overturn his loss, including Pat McCrory, the last Republican governor of the state.

“Months after election day, Republicans in Raleigh are still spinning,” McCrory said in an April 23 message he delivered on a local PBS station. 

He continued, “The rules in this election were the same as in previous elections, approved by both Republicans and Democrats, and except for Jefferson not one other candidate in either party, winner or loser, this year or previous years, has asked for those overseas military votes not to be counted. Look, I’m a Republican. I supported Jefferson for Supreme Court. I wanted him to win. But spinning your way into a Supreme Court seat isn’t the way to do it. If you change the rules in this election after the election is over, then every election could be in doubt in the future.”

It's unclear whether Griffin will appeal the ruling. A spokesperson for his campaign told local North Carolina reporter Bryan Anderson that they are "reviewing the order and evaluating next steps."

But legal experts say even if he did challenge the decision, he was unlikely to win.

“The idea of retroactively changing the rules for which ballots should count—and applying those retroactive rules just selectively in places where the challenging candidate expects to gain relative votes—sure is unconstitutional in any election system that values the rule of law,” Richard Hasen, a professor at UCLA School of Law, wrote in a post on the Election Law Blog. “The only surprise (and disappointment) here is that the North Carolina Supreme Court was willing to bless this attempted election subversion.”

Riggs, for her part, declared victory—again—and said Griffin needs to hang it up.

“Today, we won. I’m proud to continue upholding the Constitution and the rule of law as North Carolina’s Supreme Court Justice," Riggs said in a statement.