Friday, January 10

ON THE DOCKET THIS WEEK

• State Supreme Court halts certification of Justice Allison Riggs’ reelection
• New Year, new Congress, same grievances
• Remembering the late president’s record on voting rights

NORTH CAROLINA

State Supreme Court halts certification of Justice Allison Riggs’ reelection

If you thought that three vote counts — including two recounts —would be enough to settle the contentious North Carolina Supreme Court race, you’d be wrong. Despite these recounts — two of which were requested by the GOP candidate Jefferson Griffin — confirming that incumbent Justice Allison Riggs (D) won, Griffin is still challenging the results of the election.

At the heart of the issue is the North Carolina State Board of Elections’ (NCSBE) decision to reject Griffin’s challenges to more than 60,000 ballots in the race — ballots cast by voters who allegedly did not provide the required identification information when registering to vote. This has prompted not one, not two, but three different lawsuits split between state and federal courts challenging the results of the election. On Tuesday, the Republican-majority North Carolina Supreme Court blocked the certification of the race while litigation is ongoing and said it would hear Griffin’s case challenging the NCSBE’s decision.

For now, everything hinges on what the state Supreme Court will do. In theory, the state’s highest court could ultimately change the results of the election, though in her dissent of the Court taking up the case, Justice Anita Earls — the only other Democrat on the bench besides Riggs — argued it’s highly unlikely the case will succeed and that “the public interest requires that the Court not interfere with the ordinary course of democratic processes as set by statute and the state constitution.” Republican Justice Richard Dietz agreed with Earls to not take up Griffin’s case and, in a scathing dissent, said, “At bottom, the timing of Griffin’s claims speaks volumes about their substance. By waiting until after the votes were cast and the results tallied, Griffin seeks to retroactively rewrite the rules of the election to tilt the playing field in his favor.”

The ongoing drama in North Carolina has reverberations well beyond the state. “The crisis of democracy didn’t end with [President-elect Donald] Trump’s victory—it got worse,” Ben Wikler, candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee, said on X. “When North Carolina’s state Supreme Court is blocking certification of a state Supreme Court election, the house is on fire.” Read more about the challenge to the race here.

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U.S. HOUSE

New Year, new Congress, same grievances

The newly elected GOP-controlled 119th Congress sprang into this week by… picking up right where the last Congress left off: trying to disenfranchise voters.

Specifically, in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) reintroduced the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, a bill that failed to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate in the last Congress that would require anyone registering to vote in federal elections to provide proof of citizenship. Prior to the SAVE Act’s reintroduction on Tuesday, the House passed a rules package that detailed 12 of the chamber’s legislative priorities — including a nationwide proof of citizenship bill as 10th on the list. In the Senate, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said he plans to introduce the bill in the coming days.

Throughout 2024 the GOP went hard to spread the false narrative of widespread noncitizen voting in federal elections — which culminated in the passage of the SAVE Act in the House. “States already have effective safeguards in place to verify voters’ eligibility and maintain the accuracy of voter rolls,” the Biden administration said in a statement after the bill was passed.  “This bill would do nothing to safeguard our elections, but it would make it much harder for all eligible Americans to register to vote and increase the risk that eligible voters are purged from voter rolls.”

Now, with a new GOP majority in the Senate and Trump’s return to the White House, Congressional Republicans are once again trying to pass the SAVE Act, which will ultimately make it harder for thousands of people to vote. In a statement about the priority legislation that the House plans to push, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) said these bills “makes clear that House Republicans will deliver on their promises of securing the border, unleashing American energy, protecting American elections, protecting innocent life, and returning to common sense.” Read more about the SAVE Act here.

JIMMY CARTER

Remembering the late president’s record on voting rights

Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, was laid to rest on Thursday. Though he was only a one-term president, the former Democratic governor of Georgia left a lasting, positive impact on democracy — well beyond his four tumultuous years in the White House.

One of Carter's overlooked legacies was his work to protect voting rights and ensure every eligible American could vote. Notably, shortly after Carter came to the White House he sent a letter to Congress urging them to pass a package of electoral reforms — including universal same-day voter registration, closing a key campaign finance loophole and abolishing the Electoral College, among other reforms. Though the package initially had bipartisan support, opposition from the proto-Reaganist New Right — including a savvy disinformation campaign by the nascent Heritage Foundation that falsely promoted how same-day registration could allow “eight million illegal aliens in the U.S.” to vote, according to TIME — ultimately doomed it.

But Carter continued to advocate for voting rights after he left the White House. In 2005, Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker (R) co-chaired the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, which culminated in producing a lengthy report on how the country could better expand ballot access and election integrity. The Carter-Baker Commission, as it’s known these days, made some key recommendations that are still supported — but have yet to be implemented — by voting rights advocates today, like a state-led universal voting registration system, improving ballot access for people with disabilities and allowing most people with past felony convictions to vote.

But, of the 87 recommendations of the Carter-Baker Commission, there’s one specific recommendation weaponized by Republicans these days. As The New Republic noted in 2021, the report’s recommendation to implement voter ID laws to prevent fraud is often used by “conservatives looking for ammunition to discredit election results and restrict voting rights.”

OPINION

Courts Are the Last Guardrail

With the certification of Trump’s election victory Jan. 6 — four years after a very different, violent certification day that now lives in infamy — it’s clear that the guardrails on MAGA extremism are mostly gone. It does not reside in government institutions or norms. It will not be found in legacy media newsrooms where both-sides journalism is the order of the day. Nor will you find any courage in the boardrooms of large corporations as they bow and scrape before Trump.

That leaves only the courts, Marc writes in this week’s column. “If there is a guardrail protecting democracy — and that is very much an if — it exists in the black robes of our state and federal judiciary.” Read more here.

VIDEO SERIES

The race for a new DNC chair is on

In our latest video series, Marc speaks with the candidates and their vision for the Democratic Party. Check out his interviews with Ben Wikler, Ken Martin, James Skoufis and Martin O’Malley here.

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