Democrats want federal court to address GOP challenge of 60,000 NC ballots

The North Carolina Democratic Party filed a lawsuit Friday to ensure challenges of 60,000 ballots in the state’s latest election are addressed in federal court. Republicans filed the challenges with the State Board of Elections.

The challenges could affect the outcome of the state Supreme Court race between Democrat Allison Riggs and Jefferson Griffin, along with a handful of state legislative contests.

The Democrats’ federal suit focused on Republican challenges of ballots cast by overseas voters who never have lived in North Carolina, ballots of overseas voters who did not provide photo identification, and ballots of voters who registered without providing a driver’s license number or last four digits of a Social Security number.

“While protests have historically been used to challenge individual voter eligibility based on individualized evidence (e.g., evidence that a voter has been convicted of a felony, or moved to another jurisdiction and registered to vote there), each of the three categories presents a systematic challenge,” Democratic lawyers wrote. “Two of the three, moreover, rest on legal theories advanced unsuccessfully before the election by the North Carolina Republican Party (‘NCRP’) and the Republican National Committee (‘RNC’).”

“Because they involve systematic challenges, the Protests — though framed in state-law terms — implicate multiple provisions of federal law in ways that the traditional use of the protest process does not,” the lawsuit continued. “As systematic challenges to voter eligibility raised after the election, for example, the first and third categories of protest contravene the National Voter Registration Act (‘NVRA’), which prohibits what is in essence retroactive post-election voter-roll maintenance.”

“Constitutional due process also prohibits the relief the protesters seek, both because the protesting candidates failed to provide affected voters adequate notice (as required to ensure they have an opportunity to be heard) and because changing the rules for eligibility or voting after an election imposes an undue burden on the right to vote, even if the state provides notice and a chance to be heard after the election is over,” according to the Democratic suit.

“The first two categories of Protests also involve ballots cast by military and overseas citizens pursuant to the protections provided by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (‘UOCAVA’), as implemented by the North Carolina Uniform Military and Overseas Voting Act (‘UMOVA’). The third category, meanwhile, is grounded in a state statutory provision that incorporates the federal Help America Vote Act (‘HAVA’) — which prohibits (and certainly does not authorize) refusing to count a ballot on the ground that the voter’s registration records do not contain a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a social security number,” Democratic lawyers wrote.

“Put simply, the Protests demand that the NCSBE violate federal laws safeguarding North Carolinians’ fundamental right to have their votes counted,” Democrats’ lawyers argued. “In light of that demand, and given the prospect of further state proceedings by parties aggrieved by the NCBSE’s disposition of the Protests, this Court should issue a declaratory judgment regarding the application of federal law to the Protests. In particular, the NCDP requests a declaratory judgment that federal law prohibits throwing out votes in an election on the basis of the mass, systemic challenges lodged by the Protests.”

In a separate court filing, the Democratic Party linked its suit to a case already sitting in US Chief District Judge Richard Myers’ court. That dispute involves state and national Republican groups’ challenge of 225,000 voter registrations in North Carolina.

“The defendants in both cases are the same, and both cases will require the Court to interpret the voter-registration and list-maintenance processes set forth in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and the National Voter Registration Act, and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, respectively,” Democratic lawyers wrote. “Thus, the cases concern substantially the same parties, transactions, or events and call for a determination of the same or substantially related or similar questions of law and fact. … Additionally, litigating the two cases before different judges would likely be unduly burdensome and duplicative and risk conflicting results.”