North Carolina’s Highest Court Blocks Certification of Judicial Race

RALEIGH, N.C. — The Republican-controlled Supreme Court of North Carolina on Tuesday blocked the certification of a Democratic candidate’s slim-margin victory for a seat on the state’s highest court.

Instead, by a 5-1 vote, the court said it would hear Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin’s case challenging the state Board of Elections’ decision to reject his challenges to over 60,000 of the ballots cast in the race.

Justice Allison Riggs, the purported victor in the election who currently holds her seat by an appointment dating back to 2023, recused herself from Tuesday’s vote by the court.

The other Democratic member of the court, Justice Anita Earls, dissented.

Due to the razor-thin margin of her victory on Election Day, a full machine recount and a partial hand recount of the race have been conducted and both show her leading Griffin by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast.

After the election, Griffin filed multiple legal challenges across the state, claiming as many as 60,000 people had voted illegally in the contest.

In most cases, Griffin and his co-plaintiff, the North Carolina Republican Party, claim voters did not have a Social Security or driver’s license number on file in their voting records.

In others, they claim overseas voters failed to provide a photo ID with their ballots.

The state elections board, which has a 3-2 Democratic majority, rejected Griffin’s claims, leading to his seeking intervention by the state Supreme Court.

In the meantime, state Democrats filed a lawsuit in federal court, trying to preemptively ensure that all votes cast in the November election are counted.

On Monday, the federal judge overseeing that case, a Republican appointed by President-elect Donald Trump, sided with Griffin, remanding the case back to the state court.

North Carolina’s board of election filed an appeal of that decision to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but that case won’t even be briefed until February.

In the absence of further action on the federal case, the state Supreme Court’s five Republican justices said Monday’s remand gave it the authority to act on Griffin’s state-court request and blocked the certification.

In a post on the X social media platform, former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, blasted the state’s Republicans, accusing them of wanting to “toss thousands of legal votes in the trash because they don’t like the outcome.”

“Allison Riggs won and the recount confirmed it,” Cooper said. “This shouldn’t be about party politics-this should be about making sure every vote counts & that our elections still mean something.”

Jaime Harrison, the outgoing chair of the Democratic National Committee, also released a statement in which he called Griffin and the GOP’s effort to invalidate the vote in the judicial constant a “monthslong, anti-democratic campaign.”

Riggs, he said, was the clear winner of the November election with two separate recounts to prove it.

Despite this, Harrison said, “The Republican-led North Carolina Supreme Court is now attempting to give itself sole power to decide its next member rather than the North Carolina voters who unquestionably elected Justice Riggs. 

“Make no mistake — these craven attacks on North Carolina voters are an affront to this country’s foundational values of democracy and the rule of law,” he said.

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., now chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, also released a statement in which he said he found the actions of the North Carolina Supreme Court “alarming.”

“Any judge that operates in an independent and fair manner would maximize the chance that all of North Carolinians’ ballots are counted and ensure that the electoral result reflects the decision of the citizens of the state,” Holder said. “The vote is the voice and the power of the people. It is not for a court to decide the outcome of an election. In a functioning democracy the will of the people — as expressed in an election — prevails.”

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