- Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin argued in his latest court filing that counting 65,000 "illegal" ballots in the Nov, 5 election would disenfranchise millions of North Carolina voters who cast legal ballots.
- Griffin is asking the state Court of Appeals to reverse a trial judge's decision rejecting his ballot challenges. Those challenges could reverse the result of his race against appointed incumbent Democrat Allison Riggs.
- Griffin faces a Thursday deadline to respond to Riggs' request that the full Appeals Court hear the case in a rare "en banc" hearing.
Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin argued in his latest court filing Monday that counting 65,000 “illegal” ballots would disenfranchise the millions of North Carolina voters who cast legal ballots in the Nov. 5 election.
Griffin, a state Appeals Court judge, is suing the State Board of Elections for counting challenged ballots in his recent Supreme Court race against Justice Allison Riggs, an appointed incumbent Democrat. Riggs leads Griffin by 734 votes out of 5.5 million ballots cast statewide. Two recounts have confirmed Riggs’ lead.
A Jan. 7 stay from the state Supreme Court has blocked the state elections board from certifying Riggs as the winner.
A Wake County Superior Court judge rejected Griffin’s ballot challenges on Feb. 7. Now Griffin is asking the Appeals Court to overturn that decision.
“Appellees ask this Court to let an important, close election be decided by illegal ballots,” Griffin’s lawyers wrote. “Doing so disenfranchises the millions of voters who are entitled to a fair election under the rule of law. The decision below should be reversed.”
The 15-member Appeals Court typically hears cases in three-judge panels. Riggs has asked the full court to hold a rare “en banc” hearing including all eligible judges. Griffin faces a Thursday deadline to respond to that request.
Republicans outnumber Democrats, 12-3, on the state’s second-highest court. Griffin already has indicated he will not take part in the case. Riggs also filed a motion for recusal of Judge Tom Murry, also a Republican. Murry’s campaign committee contributed $5,000 to Griffin’s legal defense fund.
Griffin’s latest court filing emphasized a 2005 state Supreme Court precedent. “In James v. Bartlett, our Supreme Court excluded over 11,000 ballots that had been unlawfully cast by voters at the State Board’s instruction,” his lawyers wrote.
The state board had permitted out-of-precinct voting in two 2004 primaries, along with the general election. “[T]hose two primaries mean that the out-of-precinct voting in James was not new for the 2004 general election; it was the established practice leading up to the election,” Griffin wrote. “Yet that didn’t prevent the Supreme Court from following the law and discounting the illegal ballots.”
The General Assembly, in a “political power grab,” later “amended the laws to retroactively authorize out-of-precinct voting so the legislature could install its partisan preferences in office. That is changing the rules after an election,” Griffin’s lawyers argued.
James v. Bartlett dealt with a dispute over the 2004 election for state superintendent of public instruction. Democrat June Atkinson won the job in August 2005, when a legislature controlled by Democrats voted to seat her rather than Republican Bill Fletcher. Atkinson led Fletcher by 8,500 votes, but Fletcher had challenged the out-of-precinct votes as illegal.
The state elections board and Riggs filed briefs Thursday responding to Griffin’s initial written arguments.
A Wake County Superior Court “was right” to dismiss Griffin’s ballot challenges for three reasons, according the elections board brief filed by North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park. First, Griffin’s “request that this Court retroactively change election rules to alter the result in his recent election violates North Carolina’s version of the Purcell principle,” a federal standard that urges courts not to alter election rules during an election contest.
Second, Griffin’s “requested remedy would violate longstanding North Carolina Supreme Court precedent holding that it is fundamentally unfair, and therefore unlawful, to retroactively cancel votes that were cast in compliance with official guidance from election officials,” the elections board’s lawyers wrote.
Third, Griffin’s “protests should be denied because he failed to provide voters with adequate notice that he was challenging their votes.”
“After failing to win over the voters, Judge Griffin tried to change the election rules,” Riggs’ lawyers wrote in a separate court filing. “Each of these rules has been applied, without controversy, for years. They applied in every primary and general election race in 2024. But Judge Griffin tried to change the rules for his race only. The effect of his requested rule changes would be to retroactively disenfranchise more than 65,000 eligible North Carolina voters who followed the rules.”
“It gets worse,” Riggs’ lawyers added. “Judge Griffin adopted a flood-the-zone but cut-procedural-corners strategy, rushing out hundreds of protests targeting tens of thousands of North Carolinians.”
Outside groups seeking to influence the case’s outcome include left-of-center activists working with Democratic operative Marc Elias’ law firm and a “nonpartisan” group of more than 40 former county elections directors.
Griffin filed his opening brief with the Appeals Court one week ago. He challenges the State Board of Elections’ decision to count three types of ballots in the recent election: more than 60,000 votes cast by people whose voter registration records appeared to lack a driver’s license number or last four digits of a Social Security number, more than 5,500 overseas voters who provided no proof of photo identification, and 267 voters who have never lived in North Carolina.
“The State Board is an administrative agency that has broken the law for decades, while refusing to correct its errors,” Griffin’s lawyers wrote in the brief. “At bottom, this case presents a fundamental question: who decides our election laws? Is it the people and their elected representatives, or the unelected bureaucrats sitting on the State Board of Elections?”
“If the Board gets its way, then it is the real sovereign here,” Griffin’s court filing continued. “It can ignore the election statutes and constitutional provisions, while administering an election however it wants.”
Griffin “seeks to restore the supremacy of the democratic process and the preeminence of the rule of law,” his lawyers wrote. His election protests “challenge the State Board’s lawless administration of his electoral contest.”