The 2024 election happened 82 days ago. But North Carolina still doesn’t have a certified winner for a seat on the state Supreme Court.
And it doesn’t appear there will be any finality in the next week. WUNC reported that the state's Supreme Court contest is the only uncalled statewide race in the nation.
Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin trails Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast. That miniscule margin has held up after two statewide recounts. Now, all the action is happening on two parallel courtroom tracks.
- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond is scheduled to hear arguments Monday in the dispute. The court could send the case back to state court (what Griffin wants) or it could send the challenge to federal Judge Richard Myers and instruct him to make a decision. Myers earlier this month sent the case back to state court.
- Meanwhile, in a setback for Griffin, the state Supreme Court this week said the case should be first heard in Wake County Superior Court, before making its way through the appeals courts and, presumably, back to the state Supreme Court. It’s unclear why the state’s highest court did not rule this way earlier this year, which would have moved the process along.
It appears some Republican justices believe Griffin’s challenge still has juice.
Chief Justice Paul Newby, a Republican, wrote that it was “highly unusual” for a candidate to be ahead by 10,000 votes after Election Day, and then to see that lead vanish as mail ballots and provisional ballots were counted (Newby won his own 2020 race by an even narrower margin, 401 votes, and his Democratic opponent conceded after two recounts).
Who are the challenged ballots from?
Griffin is challenging roughly 65,000 ballots.
A little more than 60,000 were cast by people who voted by mail or early, in-person but are missing information in their voter registrations.
For years, the state’s voter registration forms didn’t explicitly say a driver's license number or the last four digits of a voter’s Social Security number were required. It’s also possible that clerical data entry errors led to the missing information.
Most of those now challenged have voted for years without incident. The Griffin campaign and his attorneys haven’t pointed to one case of fraud, but have argued the ballots should still be rejected because the registrations aren’t valid.
There are also people with similar registration problems who voted on Election Day. But because their ballots aren’t traceable, Griffin is not challenging them.
'I'm a regular person'
The 60,000 ballots include people like Tory Grimm-Oropesa, who moved to Charlotte from northern California in 2022. She then voted in two elections without incident. But Griffin challenged her ballot in November.
“I voted in three different elections now, perfectly fine, never had an issue,” she said. “So I don’t understand why this one and just this one result should be thrown out.”
Annie Rickenbaugh of Charlotte registered to vote 14 years ago. She never had a problem voting until November.
When she discovered her ballot had been challenged, she went to the Mecklenburg Board of Elections to re-register.
“I’m a regular person trying to pay my rent,” she said. “I don’t want to have to deal with this. I’m sorry…sorry, not sorry….that (Griffin) lost to a woman and can’t accept that.”
Griffin is also challenging roughly 5,500 ballots from overseas, who are allowed to vote under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. Those voters didn’t show a copy of their photo ID when voting, and Griffin has argued they should be thrown out.
The state board of elections earlier this year approved administrative rules that didn’t require photo ID for overseas ballots. That was not a unanimous vote, with the two Republican members voting no. However, those rules were then unanimously approved in March by the North Carolina Rules Review Commission, whose 10 members were selected by the Republican leaders of the state House and Senate.
Those overseas voters were thus casting their votes under the laws approved for this election — they were playing by the rules. In December, the elections board’s three Democrats and two Republicans all voted to reject Griffin’s push to challenge the overseas ballots.
GOP political consultant Paul Shumaker, who advised Griffin’s campaign, said it’s reasonable for a court to review the decisions made by the elections board and other agencies — even if they were bipartisan.
“Why are we going to have an appointed board be the final determination of the interpretation of our laws? Do we really want that?” he said. “We have judicial review of the legislative process.”
Riggs and Democrats have said Griffin and the GOP are trying to steal the election.
Griffin is also challenging a much smaller number of ballots — roughly 200 — from people born overseas who haven’t lived in North Carolina.
