() Calling it “egregious assaults on voting rights” and “sinister and shameful,” Democrats alongside North Carolina’s unsettled election battle lashed out at Republicans and Judge Jefferson Griffin on Monday afternoon.
Allison Riggs, the Democrat appointed to the state Supreme Court by Gov. Roy Cooper, was not part of the virtual press conference with Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, Cooper and North Carolina Democratic Party Chairwoman Anderson Clayton.
The race for seat 6 on the bench is the lone race without a certificate from the State Board of Elections.
Griffin, who led by roughly 10,000 votes on election night, saw his advantage gradually erode during the canvassing, as mail-in ballots were tallied. However, he argued that many of those appeared to be illegitimate based on state laws.
Griffin said the state election board wrongly rejected his protests and has pursued litigation. The decisions of the election board, 3-2 majority Democrats, have trended on party lines.
Among the concerns flagged were ballots counted by voters who were dead on Election Day, and those who had never lived in the state.
Other protests the state board denied included registration records of voters, such as lack of providing either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number. State law for that has been in place two decades, dating back to 2004; registrations prior were grandfathered in, Clayton explained.
Other ballots protested and denied by the state board included voters overseas who have never lived in the United States, and for lack of photo identification provided with military and overseas voters.
Calling Griffin’s protests of about 60,000 votes “baseless,” Harrison said, “They can’t stand the fact that they were rejected by North Carolina voters fair and square. They want to throw out votes by eligible North Carolina residents.”
Cooper, his eight years as governor having ended Dec. 31, called the court action against a state panel with majority tied to his appointment power “an egregious attack on the right to vote. They will do anything in order to win.”
All three panelists called the challege to illegitimate ballots an attack on democracy. And they warned “the eyes of the nation were watching,” saying “the playbook” would be used across the country if successful.
Cooper was among those leading the fight after 55.49% of nearly 3.7 million voters at the ballot box in 2018 favored photo identification when voting.
He and others, including a far-left lawfare group, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice—with Riggs as chief counsel part of the time—fought the constitutional amendment for more than half a decade.
Less than one-tenth of 1% of 1.8 million had any trouble with the new law on Super Tuesday last year with the litigation challenges six years later finally overcome.
Harrison, Cooper and Clayton on Monday all lauded how well Democrats did in November, a rebuke of previous arguments from the former governor and others that the party would be hurt by photo ID.
Cooper appointed Riggs to the state Court of Appeals in December 2022, then to the Supreme Court nine months later. She’s never won an election.
Clayton, in answer to one of seven questions allowed, claimed the courts and other areas were being politicized by the Republican majority Legislature.
She called the state a 50–50 makeup, though Saturday’s update continues to show unaffiliated registrations are the largest voting bloc, comprising over one-third of the state’s more than 7.8 million.
While Republicans still maintain a strong foothold, it has been shrinking over the past few decades. Democrats owned 47.6% of the voting bloc 21 years ago, and unaffiliated was less than 18%. Republicans have dropped from 34% to just under 30%.
State and federal court rulings in the case were imminenent in this third month since Election Day, with filings and responses due on five of the next 11 days starting Tuesday.
Griffin, a state appellate court judge seeking his sixth consecutive election win, has had all of his protests rejected by the state board leaving Riggs in a 734-vote victory awaiting the election certificate of the state board.
On Election Night, with 2,658 precincts reporting, Griffin led Riggs by 9,851 votes of more than 5.5 million cast. Provisional and absentee ballots that qualified were added to the totals since, swinging the race by 10,585 votes.
“The protests highlight specific irregularities and discrepancies in the handling and counting of ballots, raising concerns about adherence to established election laws,” the state Republican Party said in a statement Wednesday. “It is imperative that blatant violations of state law are decided by our state’s highest court.”
Republican Party Chairman Jason Simmons added that he hoped for a swift resolution from the state Supreme Court, where only one other justice, besides Riggs, is a Democrat.
“The people of North Carolina are ready to finally see this process brought to a conclusion and the laws our state faithfully followed,” he said. “Judge Griffin is fighting to ensure election integrity and resolution of these issues in a fair manner.”
