North Carolina court opens door to tossing tens of thousands of votes in state Supreme Court election

A divided North Carolina appeals court on Friday ruled that tens of thousands of voters in the state needed to verify their identity months after they cast their ballots, opening the door for the votes to be tossed — and for the election results to flip in a contested state Supreme Court election.

Incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs appeared to have narrowly beat back Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin last fall, prevailing by 734 votes out of 5.5 million cast across the state. Griffin protested the election results, arguing that roughly 65,000 already cast and counted ballots should be invalidated on the basis of improper voter registration and identification.

The state board of elections rejected his challenge, but the North Carolina state Supreme Court in January ruled to block certification of the results, allowing for Griffin’s case to continue.

The state appeals court on Friday ruled 2-1 along party lines in Griffin’s favor, with the two Republican judges — John Tyson and Fred Gore — writing in their majority opinion that “the post-election protest process preserves the fundamental right to vote in free elections ‘on equal terms,’” and that “this right is violated when ‘votes are not accurately counted [because] [unlawful] ballots are included in the election results.’”

Tossing out wide swaths of ballots from voters after the election would be an extraordinary decision that would likely tilt the election to Griffin, who is also a state appellate judge. His efforts to challenge the results have drawn scathing rebukes from voting rights groups, Democrats and even some Republicans who say it changing the rules of an election after it has already been run.

Riggs, the Democratic incumbent, said in a statement that the decision will be appealed. The ruling “threatens to disenfranchise more than 65,000 lawful voters and sets a dangerous precedent, allowing disappointed politicians to thwart the will of the people.”

In his challenge, Griffin argued that votes in three categories should be tossed. Many voters cast ballots with incomplete voter registrations, Griffin alleged, saying that those voters had failed to provide valid driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of their social security numbers. Others, he claimed, were overseas voters who had failed to provide proper photo identification, or who hadn’t even lived in the state.

The appellate court instructed county election boards to give in-state voters with incomplete registrations and overseas voters without photo ID fifteen days to complete registration requirements. Failure to comply would result in their ballot being thrown out.

The court also ruled that the ballots of the 267 voters in Griffin’s third category, who had not lived in the state, should be thrown out.

In a scathing dissent, Democratic Judge Tobias Hampson, the lone Democrat who heard the case, wrote that Griffin had failed to “identify a single voter” who was ineligible to vote in the 2024 election.

“Every single voter challenged by Petitioner in this appeal, both here and abroad, cast their absentee, early, or overseas ballot by following every instruction they were given to do so,” Hampson wrote.

He added that “changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes in an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the Constitution.”