Updated 4.15.25
Five months ago, Justice Allison Riggs won her seat on the NC Supreme Court by 734 votes. Since then, her opponent, Jefferson Griffin, has done everything he can to try to overturn the election. Here’s where things currently stand.
On Friday (April 11), the Republican-controlled NC Supreme Court ruled that the votes of ~60,000 early and absentee voters with incomplete voter file information would not be tossed.
However, they ruled that two other groups Griffin challenged could be:
1. Alleged “never residents”. The court ruled that the votes of 260 supposed “never residents” be thrown out – without further review or remedy.
However, excellent reporting from Bryan Anderson over the weekend (initially here, updated here and then here) found that many voters on Griffin’s “never residents” list actually “have indeed lived in the state, with some having spent their entire childhood in North Carolina, continuing to pay property taxes or working in the state.” Anderson has confirmed at least 29 such voters already.
Further, as the Assembly reported, these “never resident” voters “have been allowed to cast ballots under a 2011 statute unanimously passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly—a law that’s now been in effect for more than 40 elections. No one objected until the Republican National Committee sued shortly before the 2024 election.”
Anderson also found that 57 voters on Griffin’s “never residents” list were duplicated on Griffin’s list of challenged military and overseas voters. It is unclear whether these 57 votes will be tossed without an opportunity for remedy or included with the second set of votes:
2. Military and overseas voters from some blue counties. The NC Supreme Court ruled that up to ~5,000 military and overseas voters from a small number of blue counties would have 30 days to provide photo ID – a requirement from which military and overseas voters had originally been exempted – if they want their votes in Griffin’s race to be counted. The NC Supreme Court ruled that the NC Court of Appeals should now provide the State Board of Elections with further guidance.
It’s important to note that the four Republican justices (Newby, Berger, Barringer, and Allen) who ruled to disenfranchise these voters made a partisan decision designed to give their buddy, Griffin, a chance to overturn an election he lost. And they did so at great risk to our democracy, as the one dissenting Republican Justice, Richard Dietz, made plain in his dissenting opinion:
“When these election claims first arrived at this Court three months ago, I urged the Court to summarily reject them … I remained hopeful … that, when the time came, our state courts surely would embrace the universally accepted principle that courts cannot change election outcomes by retroactively rewriting the law.
“I was wrong. The Court of Appeals has since issued an opinion that gets key state law issues wrong, may implicate a host of federal law issues, and invites all the mischief I imagined in the early days of this case. By every measure, this is the most impactful election-related court decision our state has seen in decades. It cries out for our full review and for a decisive rejection of this sort of post hoc judicial tampering in election results.”
“Even if the federal courts ultimately reverse the Court of Appeals’ decision … the door is open for losing candidates to try this sort of post-election meddling in state court in the future. We should not allow that.”
What Happens Next
Justice Riggs, a longtime civil rights lawyer, has vowed to fight to protect every last vote. She immediately challenged the state court’s ruling in federal court, “ask[ing] a federal court judge to freeze action in the case. But District Judge Richard Myers told the state Board of Elections to prepare to act on the state court’s instructions while barring the board from declaring a winner.”
A separate federal lawsuit was also filed on behalf of the challenged military and overseas voters.
Scenes from the Riggs Rally on Monday, April 14