State Appeals Court stays GOP challenge of 60K ballots in election dispute

NC Court Of Appeals Building Sign Source: Jacob Emmons, Carolina Journal

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  • The North Carolina Court of Appeals issued a stay Friday in Republican groups' lawsuit challenging 60,000 ballots cast in the Nov. 5 election.
  • The State Board of Elections had requested the stay as Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin challenges the same ballots in separate legal action at both North Carolina's highest court and the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
  • Griffin trails Democrat Allison Riggs by 734 votes in a race that has not been certified. Court action addressing Griffin's legal complaint will extend at least through Jan. 27.

The North Carolina Court of Appeals issued a stay Friday in Republican groups’ lawsuit challenging more than 60,000 ballots cast in the Nov. 5 election. The court order arrived as GOP state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin pursues a separate legal action challenging the same ballots.

Griffin trails Democrat Allison Riggs by 734 votes in the race for an eight-year Supreme Court term. A court order has blocked North Carolina’s elections board from certifying Riggs as the race’s winner.

Election officials requested the stay in Kivett v. North Carolina State Board of Elections, a suit filed on Dec. 31 by the Wake County and North Carolina Republican Party organizations, the Republican National Committee, and two individual voters.

“By unanimous vote,” an unnamed three-judge Appeals Court panel granted the elections board’s request Friday afternoon without explanation.

“The same issues underlying the pending petitions and motions are being considered on an expedited basis by the Supreme Court of North Carolina and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit,” elections board lawyers wrote Wednesday. “A decision by either of those courts is likely to resolve, or at least provide important direction, in this matter. Accordingly, good cause exists to stay this action.”

The elections board’s court filing noted that similar issues are covered in five different legal disputes with 18 distinct case numbers in state and federal courts.

The Republican groups had filed paperwork Tuesday with the Appeals Court seeking a stay, injunction, and other court orders blocking the elections board from counting 60,000 ballots from the recent election. Those ballots had been cast by voters who registered without providing a driver’s license number or last four digits of their Social Security number.

“For over a decade the NCSBE employed a voter registration form which failed to collect the applicant’s driver’s license number or their social security number,” GOP lawyers wrote. “The NCSBE recognized this failure when it changed the statewide registration form on a forward-looking basis. However, the NCSBE repeatedly refused to contact any of the individuals who returned statutorily deficient registration forms. As a result, approximately 225,000 people are erroneously deemed ‘registered’ to vote in the state, despite each one failing to provide the driver’s license or a social security number required by law.”

“The NCSBE justified its refusal to act on the idea that a person who failed to provide the requisite information at registration would nevertheless provide some sort of identification at the polls, courtesy of North Carolina’s photo-identification statutes. This position is created from whole cloth,” the GOP court filing continued.

“Not only is the NCSBE’s intentional inaction unsupported by law, but it is also contrary to the spirit and purpose of the state’s registration statutes. Additionally, it proved to be patently false, as the NCSBE’s own records show that at least 60,000 individuals cast ballots in the November 5, 2024 general election contests for state office, each one lacking either a driver’s license number or a social security number in their registration,” Republican lawyers wrote. “The NCSBE does not seriously contest that it failed to comply with the statutory procedures for curing incomplete registrations. . Instead, they argue that there is nothing that can be done about it now. That is simply incorrect.”

Republican groups turned to the Appeals Court after Wake County Superior Court Judge William Pittman rejected the GOP’s request for a temporary restraining order and injunction against the state elections board.

Griffin challenges the same 60,000 ballots in an ongoing case with action at the state Supreme Court and the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals. Those ballots make up one of three categories Griffin labels “unlawful.”

In his most recent court filing with North Carolina’s highest court, Griffin emphasized a second category: 5,509 overseas voters who cast mail-in ballots without providing proof of photo identification. Griffin suggested that the state Supreme Court could resolve his election dispute without addressing the 60,000 ballots cast by voters with incomplete voter registration data.

The State Board of Elections will respond by Tuesday to Griffin’s state Supreme Court arguments.

Meanwhile, the elections board, Riggs, the North Carolina Democratic Party, and left-of-center activist groups working with Democratic operative Marc Elias’ law firm all have filed paperwork urging the 4th Circuit to return the case to federal court. Griffin will file a response to those requests next week. A 4th Circuit panel will hear oral arguments on Jan. 27 in Richmond, Virginia.   

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