The North Carolina State Board of Elections on Wednesday voted 3-2, along party lines, not to move forward with a hearing to determine the validity of roughly 60,000 ballots that have been questioned by Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin, who trails Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs by 734 votes.
The vote wasn’t a surprise, given that Democrats have a majority on the board. It’s likely Griffin’s challenges will ultimately be decided in court.
Griffin has already requested a statewide machine recount, which showed that Riggs won by more than 700 votes out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast. Griffin also requested a sample hand recount of some precincts, and that showed Riggs still ahead.
The elections board had already declined to conduct a full statewide hand recount.
Griffin and Republicans are challenging the validity of roughly 60,000 voters’ ballots. They say some of their registrations are incomplete because they are missing information like Social Security numbers. They say their votes should not count.
The list of contested voters includes Riggs' parents.
They are also contesting some overseas ballots, in which voters did not provide photo ID. That challenge was rejected on a bipartisan basis.
Democrats, like board Chair Alan Hirsch, said the voters had done nothing wrong since their registrations and ballots had been accepted. He said there is no sign of any fraud.
“They all believed that they were registered voters — is that correct?” Hirsch asked attorney Craig Schauer, who is representing Griffin.
Schauer responded: “I don’t know what the individual voters believed, Mr. Chair.”
Hirsch replied: “Well, they came to vote didn’t they?”
It’s expected Griffin will appeal the board’s decision in state court. The case could make its way to the N.C. Supreme Court, where the GOP has a 5-2 majority.
The North Carolina Democratic Party has filed a lawsuit in federal court in an attempt to block the state board from rejecting any ballots. Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton has said she believes the GOP challenges are “sinister” and an attempt by Republicans to overturn the result.
Riggs' campaign issued a statement Wednesday saying, “Judge Griffin’s attack on these votes was an unprecedented attempt to overturn the verdict already delivered by North Carolinian voters: they chose Justice Allison Riggs to continue serving on the North Carolina Supreme Court.”
