Supreme Court of North Carolina Temporarily banned The state Board of Elections on Tuesday certified the election of Democratic Justice Allison Riggs to the bench despite her 734-vote victory over Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin.
The court’s decision is not an out and out bar on the certification of election results; It is a postponement, which means the Election Board cannot announce the final result. The state election board was scheduled to certify the results on November 5, 2024, absent the court’s intervention on Friday.
Griffin, who sits on the state appeals court, and state Republicans have filed hundreds of lawsuits challenging Riggs’ victory. Those lawsuits hinged on claims that 60,000 ballots were ineligible, primarily because voters did not provide their driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of their Social Security numbers when they voted.
D Battle for Supreme Court seat Part of the power struggle that has dogged North Carolina politics, especially in the past eight years since the election of former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
The effort to install Griffin follows congressional gerrymandering to favor the GOP, legislative tactics to weaken the power of incoming Democratic incumbents and the establishment of a GOP supermajority in the North Carolina legislature in 2023. Although Republicans currently control seven of North Carolina’s highest party-party seats Court, Griffin could give a successful challenge party almost absolute control: Currently, the state’s highest court has five Republican members and two Democratic justices, one of whom is Riggs.
This is the latest setback in a two-month saga
On Election Day, Griffin was poised to defeat longtime civil rights lawyer Riggs by 10,000 votes. But a 10-day process known as canvassing — that county election officials count mail-in votes and provisional ballots — revealed that the election went in Riggs’ favor.
However, because his margin of victory was so slim — only 635 votes at the time — Griffin demanded a recount, which he was entitled to under state law. (If one candidate bested the other by less than 10,000 votes, the losing candidate could request a recount, but one was not automatically triggered.) The Board of Elections performed a machine recount, then a hand tabulation, both of which showed Riggs as the winner. By a narrow margin — but by then, Griffin had already taken the fight to court.
One based on Griffin’s claims 2023 Complaint Challenges North Carolina’s Registration PapersAlleging that the voter registration forms violated the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 The law requires all voter registration forms to include a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number, with few exceptions; According to the complaint, North Carolina’s voter registration materials did not make clear whether a driver’s license number or Social Security identification was required. D The State Board of Elections agreed and amended the registration paperwork But ruled that it will also be able to accept old voter registration forms.
The 2023 complaint that provides the basis for Griffin’s challenge was filed by a private North Carolina citizen, Carol Snow, who called herself an “election denier” in an email to CBS News last year. According to CBS NewsSnow is part of an activist group affiliated with it Election Integrity Network, That started with a North Carolina umbrella group trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Griffin’s challenge made it to a federal court of appeals, which then sent it back to the state Supreme Court. The Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday halted the certification while the court heard the case.
Questions complicating the case Whether a federal or state court should have jurisdiction over the case. The case later came before the state Supreme Court A federal district judge ruled That it does not need to be decided at the federal level. But the board election is still there The case continues in the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, It argues that a federal law is concerned; Griffin maintains that state court is proper venue as it relates to state election laws. Riggs requested that one A federal appeals court decided the issue.
“The theory in the Griffin camp is, North Carolina has a parallel law, it’s a statewide race for state office,” Bob Orr, a former associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, told Vox. “There is nothing federal about it, and so the state courts should resolve it.”
The North Carolina Supreme Court has become increasingly partisan in its decision-making, especially when it comes to abortion rights. Riggs retaining his seat won’t change that reality, but it will help Democrats maintain a presence on the court that they can try to build in future election cycles. This is particularly significant because the federal Supreme Court has ruled that matters such as abortion should be left to the states to decide.
“Democrats are digging themselves out of a hole on the court, and they have to hold on to this seat,” Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College in North Carolina, told Vox. “That’s what they needed to do with the General Assembly, and that’s break the Republican supermajority in at least one chamber. If they lose the seat, it’ll drop them to one”: Democratic Justice Anita Earls, whose eight-year term ends next year.
That means whether Riggs can take his place on the bench is critical not only to the state’s current Democratic priorities, but also to future Democratic goals in the state. Griffin has to submit Legal reasoning In the North Carolina Supreme Court by January 14.
