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CV NEWS FEED // A federal appeals court issued an order April 22 that temporarily blocks election officials from verifying ballots in a hotly contested race for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Democratic incumbent candidate Justice Allison Riggs requested the order after lower courts, including the state Supreme Court, ruled that Republican candidate Justice Jefferson Griffin could request ballots to be cured.
According to local NBC affiliate WXII, Riggs leads Griffin by 734 votes cast in the November 2024 election. Griffin called for two recounts that still revealed a win for Riggs. He now hopes to contest the validity of hundreds to thousands of ballots to secure his own seat on the state Supreme Court.
The New York Times reported that lower courts allowed Griffin to review specific ballots, which include those of military or overseas voters who did not provide identification while casting absentee ballots (estimated to be between 2,000 and 7,000), roughly 300 ballots cast by individuals who have never lived in the state but are still registered to vote there, and about 60,000 ballots that had information missing from their voter registration due to administrative errors.
The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled April 11 that military or overseas voters should have 30 days to verify their ballots before discounting them. The court also added that the “never resident” votes should be thrown out, while the votes from individuals with registration errors must be counted.
The New York Times added that the State Board of Elections has said that the curing of military and overseas ballots only applies to roughly 1,600 voters from Guilford County because Griffin only protested the election in that county before a specific deadline. Griffin, however, wants ballots to be reviewed from the five other counties in which he also protested.
“If the board’s interpretation is upheld, it raises the chances of Justice Riggs maintaining her win. If not, Judge Griffin would very likely emerge the winner, voting rights experts said, given the low likelihood of thousands of voters verifying their ballots, especially those in the military serving overseas,” the New York Times reported.
According to WXII, Democrats and voting rights groups maintain that Griffin’s extended efforts to secure a seat on the Supreme Court set a precedent for Republicans to change election results that they don’t like in the future. The North Carolina Republican Party reportedly states that Griffin is rightly ensuring that legal votes are the only ones counted.
Griffin, an Anglican, has previously expressed pro-life tendencies during his term on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, signing a judicial opinion that stated “life begins at conception.” Riggs’ campaign included ads with pro-abortion rhetoric.
According to WXII, Griffin’s lawyers disagreed with the April 22 appeals court ruling, arguing that the issue should have been confined to and decided by state courts.
“We expect the litigation of this case to continue for some time,” Griffin campaign spokesperson Paul Shumaker stated April 23, according to WXII. “The ruling only further delays an outcome.”
