On May 5, US Chief District Judge Richard E. Myers II ordered the North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBE) to certify incumbent North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs’ election victory over challenger Jefferson Griffin.
The ruling overturned an April North Carolina Supreme Court decision that required the military and overseas voters whom Griffin had challenged to “cure” their ballots by providing copies of their IDs. The decision had also disallowed votes from people who had marked on their ballot requests that they had never lived in North Carolina.
In addition, that April ruling had disallowed Griffin’s challenge to ballots associated with voter registrations that lacked either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number.
Myers found that the state court’s decision had violated the due process and equal protection rights of military and overseas voters. State law requires all voters to present an ID or a copy of their ID, but the SBE did not require it of military and overseas voters.
He further stated that the “lack of any notice or opportunity for eligible voters to contest their mistaken designation as Never Residents violates procedural due process and represents an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.” North Carolina’s constitution (Article VI, Section 2) limits the right to vote in state elections to people who have lived in the state for at least 30 days. Federal law requires that they be allowed to vote in federal elections, however.
The ruling preserves Riggs’ 734-vote election victory. However, Myers stayed his decision for seven days “so that Judge Griffin may pursue an appeal if he so chooses.”
The state Supreme Court could have spared us this grief if the majority had followed Justice Richard Dietz’s partial dissent to the court’s April 11 ruling:
[Griffin’s] claims are not justiciable in a backward looking challenge to a past election. These are questions that should be resolved in a declaratory judgment action seeking prospective relief that would apply in future elections.
In other words, you cannot change the rules of the game after the game has been played, even if those rules are unfair. The best you can do is correct the rules before the next game.
So, what should happen next?
First, the new SBE majority that takes office on May 7 and the state director it appoints on the same day should heed the state Supreme Court before the 2026 election. They must obtain the legally required identification numbers for voter registrations that lack them; require voter ID for all ballots, including military and overseas; and create a process for counties to provide federal-only ballots to people who have never resided in North Carolina.
The procedural, due process, and equal protection arguments that stopped Griffin’s 2024 post-election claims at the state and federal levels will not protect the SBE against 2026 pre-election claims on those same issues.
Second, while Griffin has every right to appeal Myers’ ruling, he would be doing himself and the voters of North Carolina a disservice if he did. Continuing his challenge would further undercut trust in the election process and damage his reputation and political future.
Jefferson Griffin’s challenge of his election loss has resulted in victories that will make North Carolina’s elections more secure, but he will not enjoy the fruits of those victories. That can rightly be seen as a personal disappointment, but persisting in his challenge after Myers’ ruling would render it a farce. It is past time to put an end to it.