There’s been a slew of significant legal developments in the ongoing saga of the North Carolina state Supreme Court race — with the most significant one poised to boost Democratic Justice Allison Riggs’ chances of prevailing.
Though Riggs won the election by just 734 votes, her Republican challenger, appeals court judge Jefferson Griffin, and the GOP are trying to steal the election with multiple lawsuits to get some 65,000 ballots disqualified. Last week, the state Supreme Court issued an order declaring that about 60,000 ballots with incomplete registrations cast in the race will still be counted.
But the order also moved to disenfranchise some 5,000 ballots cast by military and overseas voters unless they cure their ballots in 30 days. Riggs, the state’s Democratic party and a host of pro-voting groups took the fight to federal court, but the federal district court denied their requests to halt the ballot curing process.
On Tuesday, state election officials clarified in a court filing the state of the curing process: the number of ballots at risk of being thrown out is significantly lower than the 5,000-plus previously thought to be at issue. The board said 1,409 ballots from military and overseas voters from a single county — Guilford County — are subject to challenge. Challenges in other counties were invalid, the board said, because Griffin submitted the additional challenges after the state deadline.
To cure these ballots, the board intends to have the Guilford County Board of Elections review documentation submitted with the ballots to confirm that the voters didn’t include ID. If the county finds that the voters did submit ID, or an exception form, their votes will not be challenged.
The Supreme Court’s order also greenlit a lower court’s decision to reject up to 266 ballots cast in 55 counties by overseas voters who are registered to vote in North Carolina but never resided in the state. The board detailed a plan to reach out to these affected voters and give them a chance to confirm their residence status before their ballots are disqualified.
The new numbers appear to put Riggs in a much stronger position to prevail against Griffin in this prolonged legal saga — and Griffin isn’t having it.
In a filing Wednesday, he asked the state appeals court to expand the number of curable and disqualifiable ballots back to more than 5,000. He’s also trying to expand the number of never-residents whose ballots should be disqualified beyond the 266 number. In his filing, Griffin said he requested information on never residents from each county but only received information on 266 never residents provided by the state board by the time he filed his election protests in December.
Meanwhile, Riggs and several pro-voting groups are continuing their fight to get every ballot counted in federal court. On Wednesday, Riggs and several pro-voting groups filed motions in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals seeking to block the state from starting the cure process.
“Military and overseas voters followed all the rules and should not have to jump through additional hoops to have their votes count,” Riggs’s campaign said in a statement on the requested stay. “We are continuing to stand up for military voters in federal court to protect their constitutional right to vote — we are grateful to these brave Americans for their service and know that they deserve better than this.” Read more about the latest developments in the legal challenge to the North Carolina Supreme Court race here.
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