BY GARY D. ROBERTSON Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Copland Rudolph cast a ballot in the November election, just as she has for years, with her vote counting on a long list of North Carolina contests that were settled soon after.
Nearly three months later, she’s still not sure it will count for one of the higher-profile races — a seat on the state Supreme Court.
The Republican candidate, Jefferson Griffin, is still seeking to reverse the outcome, even after two recounts showed Democratic Associate Justice Allison Riggs narrowly winning the election. Riggs remains on the court while the legal battles play out.
Litigation in state and federal court should decide the outcome of Griffin’s efforts to have roughly 66,000 ballots thrown out. If the legal challenge succeeds, Griffin’s lawyers say it would probably result in him claiming the seat. That would expand the high court’s current 5-2 conservative majority.
Rudolph is among the voters whose ballots are being challenged by Griffin and who could be disenfranchised, and she’s not happy about it. Her message to Griffin is clear: Stop the games and concede the race.
“It’s infuriating,” said Rudolph, 57, who leads an education foundation in Asheville. “These votes have been counted. They’ve been recounted. The math is not in doubt.”
Trying to undo a ‘free and fair’ election
Democrats, voting rights activists and good government groups say Griffin’s actions and support for them by the state GOP are an affront to democracy. The votes on the challenged ballots have otherwise been used to determine the outcome of every other top race in North Carolina last fall.
While The Associated Press has declared 4,436 winners in the November election, with four candidates headed to runoff elections, the North Carolina Supreme Court contest is just one of four races nationwide that remain undecided.
Griffin’s critics say his refusal to accept defeat is a blatant attempt to overturn the will of the voters and further partisan interests. His legal arguments, if successful, could serve as a road map for the GOP to reverse future election results in other states.
“The eyes of the entire country are on this race because the implications of having free and fair elections that are being questioned and potentially overturned are devastating,” former North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper told reporters this month.
The legal fight is taking place against the backdrop of another maneuver by state Republicans criticized s an undemocratic power grab. Last month, Republican lawmakers in the legislature used their then-supermajority to override Cooper’s veto of a bill to strip numerous powers from now-Gov. Josh Stein and other statewide Democratic officials.
The fight in the nation’s ninth most populous state over the Supreme Court seat is being considered in two court systems. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments Monday about whether federal or state courts should handle the case.
The state Supreme Court declined this week to grant Griffin’s request for the justices to fast-track a decision on whether the ballots should be counted or removed from the final tally. They said Griffin’s appeals of State Board of Elections decisions last month that dismissed his ballot protests must go through a trial court first.
Part of a broader GOP preelection legal strategy
Riggs leads Griffin by just 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast. Her side says Griffin is trying to overturn an election after the fact by removing ballots and violating voters’ rights, and that he should have conceded long ago.
“I am disappointed that the door has been opened to dragging this out for so long,” Riggs said in a news release this past week. “I will continue to make sure that the more than 65,000 voters who Griffin seeks to disenfranchise have their voices heard.”
Griffin has declined comment on the litigation, saying doing so would violate the state’s judicial conduct code.
On election night. Griffin led Riggs by about 10,000 votes, but that lead switched to Riggs as provisional and absentee ballots were added to the totals.
Republicans already had signaled they might pursue postelection challenges in close North Carolina races when they filed numerous preelection lawsuits, a tactic the GOP used in other states last year. Their North Carolina lawsuits focused in part on registration and residency issues that are now contained in Griffin’s protests.
“Elections boards don’t have the authority to ignore and overrule the state constitution or state law,” state GOP Chairman Jason Simmons said recently on the social platform X.
No evidence that any of the voters are ineligible
A little over 60,000 of the challenged ballots were from voters whose registration records lack a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number, which election officials have been required to collect since 2004. This group includes even Riggs’ parents.
Griffin’s attorneys say the registrations are incomplete and they blame the state board for having registration forms that for years didn’t specifically require one of these numbers. But lawyers for Riggs and the state board say there are many legitimate reasons why the numbers are missing. In any case, critics of the challenges say, it’s not the voters’ fault.
Griffin has offered no evidence that any of the registered voters are ineligible, according to legal briefs from Riggs and the state board. The briefs also said removing their ballots would run afoul of federal law.
Griffin’s legal strategy has recently focused more on 5,500 ballots from what his lawyers refer to as overseas voters who did not provide copies of photo identification, as other voters are required to do. Lawyers for Riggs and the elections board have told judges that many of the ballots that fall into this category were cast by military personnel, and that state and federal law doesn’t require any of these voters to provide an ID.
The State Board of Elections, in which three of the five members are Democrats, dismissed Griffin’s protests last month, mostly along partisan lines, but the state Supreme Court on Jan. 7 blocked certification of a Riggs victory, at least for now.
All other races in the state have been certified and likely would not be affected by the result of Griffin’s challenges, even if courts sided with him and found that thousands of ballots should not have been counted. The ballots Griffin is challenging were absentee ballots or those cast during early in-person voting.
A fundamental right in jeopardy
As the cases play out, Democrats and voting-rights advocates are on a media offensive to preserve Riggs’ victory in a swing state where Republican Donald Trump won the presidental race but Democrats earned victories in the most prominent statewide offices. They’ve put up anti-Griffin billboards and held demonstrations.
On a recent day, a political group called the “Can’t Win Victory Fund” set up across from the state Supreme Court building and spent the day reading the names of voters whose ballots Griffin is trying to toss out.
Even a conservative group focused on improving voter confidence in elections has begun airing a television ad critical of the challenges.
Dawn Baldwin Gibson, an African American pastor and school administrator from rural Pamlico County, has been told her ballot is being challenged.
A registered voter who is not affiliated with any party, Gibson recalls her grandfather telling her that “voting fundamentally made you American.” Now election officials have been unable to explain to her why someone would question her vote.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she said.