Judge Jefferson Griffin and Justice Allison Riggs (Courtesy photos)
Democrats said GOP Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to throw out votes subsequent to last November’s state Supreme Court election is a template for future Republican challenges in close elections nationwide.
“What’s happening in North Carolina goes beyond state borders,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin told reporters. “If Republicans are successful in changing the rules post-election and throwing away valid votes, this will have broad implications, serious repercussions, on elections across the country for years to come.”
State and national Democrats held their news conference nearly a week after the state Appeals Court sided with Griffin over the state Board of Elections in his attempt to toss more than 60,000 votes in his race to win an associate justice seat on the high court.
He is trying to unseat Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs, who holds a 734-vote lead. Her lead was confirmed in two recounts.
Asked if Republicans planned to use the strategy in other states, state GOP spokesman Matt Mercer called the question’s premise “ridiculous” in an email.
After Griffin’s Appeals Court win last week, Mercer sent out a statement calling it a vindication of Griffin’s election integrity protests.
A 2-1 Republican majority on the Appeals Court panel agreed with Griffin that the elections board should not have counted more than 60,000 votes from people who did not have a partial Social Security number or driver’s license number attached to their registration in the state database.
Voters have come forward over the last four months to say that they supplied information, but it was not in the database due to typos or data mismatches.
Overseas and military absentee voters have not been required to submit photo ID with their ballots. The state Board of Elections should not have exempted those voters from the state photo ID requirement, the Appeals Court decision said. Griffin is challenging more than 5,500 of those voters in a handful of heavily Democratic counties.
The Appeals Courts said voters who have never lived in North Carolina but are connected to the state through their parents do not have the right to vote in non-federal elections. Griffin is challenging a few hundred of those voters.
The elections board and Riggs are appealing to the state Supreme Court, where Republicans hold a majority. Three of the six justices who would hear the case have in previous court opinions supported some of Griffin’s arguments.
North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton called Griffin’s lawsuits “a fundamental attack on our democracy.”
State Democrats and the DNC are “preparing for every scenario possible” to make sure votes are counted, she said.
Rep. Phil Rubin (D-Wake) is lead sponsor of a bill that would prevent throwing out the ballots of voters who relied on laws in effect during the election. It would also invalidate challenges based on technical or clerical registration form errors, unless the protester shows the voter was ineligible.
Republicans hold a majority in the House, so the bill is unlikely to get a hearing.
Rubin acknowledges that it is “obviously an uphill climb,” but said it was important to file the bill.
“We wrote this bill as a model that I hope other states will take up,” he said. “There is no reason to think that these tactics will be limited to North Carolina.”