Democrats try to block attempt to throw out votes in North Carolina election

The Democratic National Committee on Friday attempted to stop North Carolina Republicans’ effort to invalidate tens of thousands of ballots from the November election and upend a state supreme court race that Democrats won.

The DNC filed a legal action on Friday to intervene in a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee in Wake county, North Carolina, in late December, seeking to throw out votes because of alleged missing information on registration forms.

This week, the North Carolina supreme court stalled the state elections board from confirming the results of a November supreme court race that their Democratic colleague, Allison Riggs, won by a margin of just more than 700 votes. The Republican candidate, Jefferson Griffin, has made claims of missing voter registration information in multiple legal filings before and after the election.

The actions in North Carolina have Democrats and democracy advocates concerned and fighting back over fears voters could be disenfranchised and elections overturned.

“For months, North Carolina Republicans have attempted to steal an election in plain sight at taxpayers’ expense, seeking to throw away some 60,000 lawful votes cast in the race for North Carolina supreme court justice,” the DNC chair, Jaime Harrison, said in a statement. “On November 5, North Carolina voters elected Justice Allison Riggs. Their voices will be heard.”

The Wake county case alleges that a swath of voters should not have been eligible to vote because they did not include driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of their social security numbers on their voter registration forms.

At issue is the way the state has implemented requirements under the Help America Vote Act. The state’s voter registration form requests people provide their license or social security digits but it does not say the information is required. Those who did not provide either were given a unique identifier by state election officials and then had to show a document to prove their identity when voting. This has been the general process for 20 years without issue, the DNC notes in its brief, until Republicans seized on it in this election cycle.

The RNC lawsuit estimates the state board of elections does not have this information for about 60,000 voters, who they contend should not have their ballots counted. They want the board to keep these ballots separate, contact the voters involved to seek the missing information, and then remove their ballots from state and local contests if they do not respond.

The Wake county lawsuit is the “fifth attempt in thirteen months to disenfranchise voters who allegedly did not include their driver’s license or social security number on their voter registration form”, the DNC writes.