The 'incredible mischief' of trying to overturn yet another election

The challenge to the election for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court is part of a larger trend of claims of faulty elections. WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson, in his "On My Mind" commentary, says the challengers are playing a dangerous game.

There is whining that the referees screwed over your team. There is demanding to speak to the manager. And then there is whatever the heck Jefferson Griffin is attempting in his effort to overturn his loss in the state Supreme Court election in November.

Two recounts confirmed that Griffin got beat by incumbent Justice Allison Riggs. It was extremely close — Riggs won by just 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast. But close still counts, especially when the ballots have been counted again and again. Griffin didn’t get the votes.

So now he is looking for an even smaller number of votes: Four, from the Republican majority of the Supreme Court itself.

The court sided with Griffin last week and blocked the Board of Elections’ certification of the election results. They’ll decide whether they allow Griffin’s challenge to overturn the election in the coming weeks. Riggs, of course, recused herself. But four Republican justices on the seven-member court granted the stay. One Republican, Richard Dietz, and the other Democrat, Anita Earls, dissented.

And for good reason. Griffin has not shown a single case of voter fraud in his election.

What he is arguing is that some 60,000 ballots should be thrown out because their registrations don’t include their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number. A federal law started requiring that information in 2002, but some voters registered before then, and the state’s registration forms asked for the information but didn’t make clear that it was required.

In other words, Griffin’s argument is bull. But it’s just one of many hunks of total bull that the new GOP is willing to fling in order to overturn free and fair elections.

According to ProPublica, the driver’s license theory was one of many floated as right-wing activists met with a group called the Election Integrity Network. They were trying to figure out ways to contest the 2024 presidential election if Donald Trump had lost.

It doesn’t matter to them that the Board of Elections, which has a Democratic majority, has said there is no chance any of this made a difference in the election.

It doesn’t matter that, if Griffin should win his challenge, that every other election in North Carolina would also have to be re-examined — including the ones Republicans won.

All that matters is winning now.

The long-term result, of course, is the erosion of faith in our elections, our government, and eventually, the idea of democracy itself. Dietz, the Republican justice who dissented, put it this way: “Permitting post-election litigation that seeks to rewrite our state’s election rules — and, as a result, remove the right to vote in an election from people who already lawfully voted under the existing rules — invites incredible mischief.”

You can only say the game is rigged and the refs are crooked so many times before the audience decides the rules no longer matter. I’m afraid that’s exactly the result Jefferson Griffin, and others like him, is looking for.