The North Carolina Court of Appeals has ruled that nearly 65,000 ballots from the state Supreme Court race can be challenged, The Guardian reported. The 2-1 decision came as part of a months-long battle over the results.
In November's election, Republican appellate judge Jefferson Griffin lost to Democrat Allison Riggs by just 734 votes. Griffin now sits on the Court of Appeals, where three of his colleagues ruled that his challenge could proceed.
"To permit unlawful votes to be counted along with lawful ballots in contested elections effectively ‘disenfranchises’ those voters who cast legal ballots, at least where the counting of unlawful votes determines an election’s outcome," the majority opinion said. The race remains undecided.
🚨 JUST IN: North Carolina Court of Appeals orders 65K voters to prove eligibility in Supreme Court race as Republican Jefferson Griffin challenges 700-vote deficit. pic.twitter.com/WOjskJZ125
— Proud Elephant 🇺🇸🦅 (@ProudElephantUS) April 4, 2025
Griffin claims that several ballots counted should not have been due to ineligibility. The 60,000 that are to be challenged come from voters who failed to provide the last four digits of their social security number or North Carolina driver's license number.
In addition, 5,500 ballots were cast by people living abroad and did not include the required ID, including the children of military members who never lived in the state. Despite these concerns, the state board of elections refused to hear Griffin's case.
However, Friday's decision now demands a review of the ballots, which Democratic Judge Toby Hampson said was "directly counter to law" in his dissenting opinion. "The diligent actions these voters undertook to exercise their sacred fundamental right to vote was, indeed, the same as every other similarly situated voter exercising their voting right in the very same election," Hampson wrote.
"Changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes in an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the constitution," he added. Hampson also believes it's impractical to have voters respond to eligibility request notices after the fact.
"The proposition that a significant portion of these 61,682 voters will receive notice and timely take curative measures is a fiction that does not disguise the act of mass disenfranchisement the majority’s decision represents," Hampson wrote. Despite requiring the verification points since 2004, the state didn't change its form until 2023 to include them.
According to the New York Times, the decision to potentially toss votes after the fact is unprecedented. Court challenges almost without fail have erred on the side of upholding election results.
Benjamin Ginsberg, an attorney for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and its aftermath, noted the significance of this decision. "By changing the rules of the game after it’s been played to potentially disenfranchise as many as 60,000 voters, this court has gone where no court has gone before," Ginsberg said.
"Until this decision, courts facing challenges to ballots cast in compliance with past practice and election administrators’ instructions had uniformly sided with the voters," he added. This issue in North Carolina could go to the U.S. Supreme Court for resolution.
"If the State Supreme Court affirms the lower court’s decision, that would present a federal constitutional question for consideration by the Supreme Court of the United States," former federal appeals judge J. Michael Luttig, a President George H.W. Bush appointee, said. It's unclear how the conservative-leaning court would rule in that case.
Voter eligibility is a valid concern, especially in races that come down to just a few hundred votes. However, the practicality of overturning election results and dragging out legal battles is questionable and could have a damaging impact on voter confidence.
