Republican Jefferson Griffin wins NC appeals court challenge in case contesting 65K ballots

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    RALEIGH, North Carolina (WRAL) — Thousands of North Carolina voters could soon have their 2024 ballots thrown out, the state Court of Appeals ruled Friday in a case that could flip to Republicans another seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court months after the November election.

If the ruling stands, the State Board of Elections would be required to ask more than 60,000 voters to provide proof of their identity. Anyone who doesn’t respond will have their ballot thrown out — an outcome that could tilt the narrow race for the high-court seat in favor of the Republican candidate, Jefferson Griffin, who challenged the ballots.

The 2-1 ruling, which came down along party lines, also identified several hundred voters who it said should have their ballots thrown out no matter what, based on a new interpretation of the state constitution.

Griffin, who is a judge on the Court of Appeals, challenged Democratic incumbent Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs for her seat on the high court in the 2024 election. Recounts showed that Riggs received 734 more votes than Griffin. But the winner of the race hasn’t been made official, while Griffin challenges the voters’ registration and the validity of their ballots.

Riggs, who has joined the state board in the lawsuit, said Friday that she would fight the ruling. “We will be promptly appealing this deeply misinformed decision that threatens to disenfranchise more than 65,000 lawful voters and sets a dangerous precedent, allowing disappointed politicians to thwart the will of the people,” she said in a statement.

Griffin alleges that various rules were broken by some voters in the 2024 elections. He didn’t challenge all of the ballots that fell into those contested categories. Instead, he primarily targeted voters from certain demographics and counties that lean Democratic.

The judges wrote Friday that they weren’t swayed by arguments that Griffin selectively challenged only some voters and that his effort was motivated less by a concern for election integrity and more by a desire to win the election. “The Court is not concerned with the race, sex, age, or party affiliation of any contested voter or the outcome,” the ruling states.

The biggest group of the more than 60,000 voters Griffin is challenging are those who he says lack identifying information in a state database that’s supposed to collect the driver’s license number or Social Security number of voters when they register.

The North Carolina State Board of elections rejected Griffin’s initial challenge, with board chairman Alan Hirsch calling Griffin’s efforts “anathema to the democratic system.” Griffin challenged the board’s decision in court; he lost at trial in Wake County Superior Court before taking his case to the Court of Appeals. Griffin has said that he expects to win the race if he prevails in court.

In a statement, Griffin’s campaign said the ruling affirms the candidate’s claim that the elections board failed to apply laws that govern elections.

“We stand by the process of allowing the State Board a second chance to do its job and ensure that only eligible voters cast ballots in our elections,” the Griffin campaign said, adding that the ruling is “a win for the citizens of North Carolina.”

The North Carolina Republican Party, which has spoken on Griffin’s behalf throughout his legal challenge, said the ruling vindicates Griffin and the state GOP, who have faced strong criticism for their attempts to reverse the results of the election.

“For months, Judge Griffin and the NCGOP have endured baseless attacks and incendiary rhetoric in this matter,” NCGOP spokesman Matt Mercer said in a statement. “Throughout this time, our position has been consistent: when the debate is about the merits, Judge Griffin will prevail in his election integrity concerns.”

The elections board released a statement Friday that didn’t comment on the ruling itself, but which urged people who are on the list of challenged voters, or who think they might be, to update their voter registration.

The state Division of Motor Vehicles shares much of its data with the elections board, and the board said anyone who has a driver’s license can easily update their voter information online through the DMV website.

“Regardless of the ultimate outcome of this ongoing legal dispute, any voter who is concerned that their voter registration information is incomplete or is not up to date should submit an updated voter registration form,” the elections board said in the statement.

Stakes of the ruling Friday’s decision comes two weeks after lawyers for Griffin and the elections board argued their cases to a three-judge panel on the appellate court. The panel included two Republican judges John Tyson and Fred Gore, and one Democratic judge, Toby Hampson. And the 2-1 ruling in favor of Griffin came in a party-line decision, as have many of the previous rulings in this case, with Tyson and Gore ruling in favor and Hampson dissenting.

Hampson wrote that the voters followed every rule they were told to during the election, and that Griffin shouldn’t be allowed to change the rules after the fact to throw out their ballots.

“Changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes in an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the Constitution,” Hampson wrote.

Their decision is among the most important so far in the case — and it could set up more action yet. The state elections board is expected to appeal the decision — a process that could ultimately put the state Supreme Court in the unusual position of ruling on one of its own members. The case could also end up in federal court.

The appellate court decision is important for now, though, because it would likely be the last state court to rule before it reaches the state Supreme Court. With Riggs having recused herself, there’s a chance the remaining six members of the state Supreme Court could deadlock at 3-3 in the decision. If that happens, the most recent ruling would stand.

Before the case gets to the state Supreme Court, though, it’s possible it could be heard again by the full Court of Appeals instead of just a three-judge panel. The court has 15 members, but Griffin has also recused himself from the case, so it could be heard by the remaining 14 judges before moving on to the Supreme Court.

Riggs and the elections board had originally sought to fast-track the case directly to the state Supreme Court, attempting to skip the Court of Appeals. But Griffin fought it and won; the Supreme Court denied the board’s request in a 4-2 ruling.

Riggs has repeatedly called on Griffin to drop his challenges and concede defeat, but he has continued pressing forward in court. An election victory for Griffin would shift the Supreme Court to a 6-1 GOP majority. Democrats want to flip back control of the court before 2030, when the next round of redistricting will begin, but a Griffin win would complicate the party’s effort.

The roughly 60,000 ballots being challenged are only a small fraction of the 5.7 million North Carolinians who voted in the 2024 elections. Most elections were decided by a big enough margin that the outcome of this lawsuit won’t make a difference.

A few competitive state legislative seats were also originally included in the GOP’s challenge against the ballots, but those candidates have since dropped their challenges and conceded defeat.

So the only race that still has yet to be called is the Supreme Court race, which came down to razor-thin margins.

The case has attracted national attention as Democrats accuse Republicans of trying to steal the election — and of using North Carolina as a test for what could become a national strategy for overturning future election results.National political groups have spent tens of millions of dollars on North Carolina Supreme Court races in the past decade, due in large part to the court’s power to either allow or block politically gerrymandered districts drawn for North Carolina 14 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

DNC Chair Ken Martin said Friday the ruling is an assault on voting rights — and a strategy that he fears Republicans in other states will use in the future to overturn elections they lose.

“This partisan decision has no legal basis and is an all-out assault on our democracy and the basic premise that voters decide who wins their elections, not the courts,” Martin said. “If upheld, this could allow politicians across the country to overturn the will of the people.”

Missing hyphens Most of the voters in this case are being challenged because the state’s database of voter registrations doesn’t include information it is required to have about them, such as driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers. In many cases that’s due to misspelled names or a mis-typed number.

State officials have acknowledged problems with the database but say there’s no indication of any actual fraud. They said many of the cases are instances when people did provide the information they were supposed to, but government workers made a mistake putting it in the spreadsheet.

The elections board says Griffin’s entire argument is moot because, in order to cast a ballot, the voters all had to either show their photo ID or provide their Social Security number on an exception form. So even if their information isn’t included in a spreadsheet, the state argues, elections officials still verified those voters’ identities.

Griffin has also not been able to point to any cases of real or suspected fraud in the election, but he has argued that shouldn’t matter. The lack of information in the spreadsheet alone is enough to throw out the ballots, he says.

The appellate judges agreed. They wrote in Friday’s ruling that they felt they had the power to simply throw out all the ballots and disallow people from trying to fix the issues. But they said they’d give the voters the chance to correct the errors. Riggs’ parents are among the voters whose ballots Griffin is asking to throw out.

State officials say those voters shouldn’t be punished for mistakes made by other people — and that it would set a troubling precedent for North Carolina to tell people they can vote, only to take away their vote after the fact.

Overseas voters Griffin is also challenging several thousand overseas voters, mostly for not showing voter photo identification. Griffin challenged overseas voters from only four of the state’s 100 counties, all urban areas that Riggs won.

Overseas voters have never been required to show photo ID, but Griffin says it should’ve been required, and that their ballots should be invalidated. The appellate judges also agreed with that argument in their ruling Friday, saying those voters need to provide a photo ID or else have their ballots thrown out.

Griffin is also challenging a few hundred overseas voters who aren’t North Carolina residents but are allowed to vote here because their parents are registered here. State law allows those voters to vote here, but Griffin argued the law is unconstitutional. The judges agreed and ruled their ballots should all be thrown out.

The law passed the legislature with unanimous support in 2011, shortly after Republicans took control of the state legislature. It’s intended to let the children of soldiers and religious missionaries living overseas maintain their connection to the state by voting here despite living in a foreign country.

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