In a Victory For Voters
Federal Court Blocks GOP Effort to Overturn North Carolina Supreme Court Election
(Democracy Docket)
In a victory for voters, a federal court has halted Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin’s efforts to overturn an election and disenfranchise thousands of voters. A federal judge has ordered the state to certify Democratic Justice Allison Riggs’ victory.
The decision comes exactly six months after Election Day and was handed down by a judge appointed by President Donald Trump.
Griffin tried to disqualify ballots from overseas military voters and U.S. citizens born abroad who voted under long-standing state law. The North Carolina Supreme Court and North Carolina Court of Appeals initially ruled that those voters must cure their ballots by providing photo ID after the fact, or their votes would not count. The federal court has now ruled that changing the rules after the election was unconstitutional.
Judge Richard E. Myers II, a Trump appointee, ruled that the process violated equal protection because it treated some voters differently than others in the same situation.
“The cure process offends equal protection principles because it treats overseas military and civilian voters casting ballots in certain counties differently than others who are identically situated,” the court ruled, finding the process to be “inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” and therefore could not proceed.
The court has ordered North Carolina to finalize the results based on the original vote count, securing Justice Riggs’ seat on the State Supreme Court.
The Griffin campaign has told a reporter it is “reviewing the order and evaluating next steps.”
“Permitting parties to ”upend the set rules” of an election after the election has taken place can only produce “confusion and turmoil [which] threatens to undermine public confidence in the federal courts, state agencies, and the elections themselves,” the judge ruled.
US Chief District Judge Richard Myers placed a one-week hold on his decision to give Griffin time to appeal.
Federal judge rules for Riggs, orders her certified as NC Supreme Court winner
(North Carolina Journal)
A federal judge has ordered the North Carolina State Board of Elections to certify Democrat Allison Riggs as the winner of the 2024 state Supreme Court election. The decision rejects ballot challenges from Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin.
US Chief District Judge Richard Myers placed a one-week hold on his decision to give Griffin time to appeal.
Myers rejected a state Supreme Court decision in April that placed at least 1,675 and as many as 5,700 ballots from the fall election in question. The state’s highest court endorsed a ballot “cure” process to deal with the disputed ballots.
Most of those ballots were tied to overseas voters who provided no photo identification. A smaller number involved “never residents” who had checked a box on a voter form indicating they had never lived in North Carolina or the United States.
Myers’ decision preserves Riggs’ 734-vote lead over Griffin out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast last fall.
“IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the 1. Retroactive invalidation of absentee ballots cast by overseas military and civilian voters violates those voters’ substantive due process rights; 2. The cure process violates the equal protection rights of overseas military and civilian voters; and 3. The lack of any notice or opportunity for eligible voters to contest their mistaken designation as Never Residents violates procedural due process and represents an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote,” Myers wrote.
“IT IS FURTHER ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that the State Board SHALL NOT take any action in furtherance of the North Carolina Court of Appeals and Supreme Court’s orders,” Myers added.
“The State Board SHALL certify the results of the election … based on the tally at the completion of the canvassing period on December 10, 2024,” Myers wrote, confirming Riggs’ lead.
Riggs is an appointed incumbent state Supreme Court justice. Griffin is a state Appeals Court judge.
Griffin challenged more than 65,000 ballots counted in the final tally from Nov 5. A January order from Riggs’ state Supreme Court colleagues blocked the elections board from declaring Riggs as the winner. The state Supreme Court’s April order allowed more than 60,000 of those ballots to remain in the vote count. Those ballots were tied to voters who appeared to have incomplete registration records.
Riggs, the elections board, the state Democratic Party, and other outside groups urged Myers to rule that federal law prevents election officials from tossing any votes at this stage in the electoral process. Meanwhile, Griffin called on Myers to allow the state Supreme Court’s decision to stand.
Riggs’ lawyers urged Myers not to let the “volume of filings” in the case distract him from the “straightforward questions” he must address.
“Changing the election rules after the votes have been cast and counted is wrong and unconstitutional,” Riggs’ lawyers wrote. “So too is targeting military and overseas voters who happened to register in a Democratic-leaning county.”
“Judge Griffin wants to avoid those common-sense principles of federal law,” the brief continued. “But he must confront them. He cannot overturn his election loss without convincing a court that federal law permits retroactive, selective changes to the voting rules. The North Carolina courts did not decide those federal questions because this Court retained jurisdiction over them. Those questions are now for this Court to decide.”
“This Court should stop this dangerous effort to undermine the will of the people,” Riggs’ lawyers added.
Though the dispute is now six months old, state Supreme Court operations have not been affected. Riggs continues to serve on the court and participate in its arguments and decisions.
Griffin continues to serve on the Appeals Court.
Wowser!
Score one for the rule of law. Yes, Griffin can still appeal, but it seems very unlikely that he could prevail.
J. Arthur Crank
Going forward in life, I think I will put IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED in all of my writings.
WaterGirl
I wrote this early yesterday evening and had it scheduled for this morning. David put up a post about this late last night, but I am posting this one anyway since it was already scheduled and may have more or different information.
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl: That could be a keeper.
Just like, “Fuck you, strong letter to follow.”
WaterGirl
I love the framing in the top article:
Not a horserace, not a victory for Democrats, a victory for the people who voted.
Of course, the top article was from Democracy Docket, so we would expect nothing less. As opposed to the mainstream media, who single-mindedly see everything as a horse race.
J. Arthur Crank
@WaterGirl: IT IS ORDERED, ADJUDGED AND DECREED that having two posts on this topic is just fine.
Baud
I was unaware of this.
No offense to the people validly outraged, but a slow and steady approach is not a bad thing if it’s not causing us interim harm.
At least now I can rest easy about the timing of the appeals process.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Good catch. DD is great.
JML
While I’m not a practicing attorney these days, I will say it’s always a clear sign when the judge literally repeats the argument of one of the parties in their ruling. That’s about as clear of a “shut up, you’re dumb” rebuke to Griffin as you can get…
Mike E
The NC Supreme Court is a repub majority of 5-2… the elected NC appeals circuit is completely red, with not a single dem judge among them. The state legislature is virtually a Teapublican supermajority with the house chamber just one seat shy of overturning Gov Stein’s vetoes (the GOP senate has no impediment in that regard), so the right wing coup initiated in 2010 continues unabated.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike E: Wisconsin was being written off by people a few years ago. Take the win and work for more.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
I never understood how this was meant to work. Ballots aren’t connected to specific voters, are they? I mean, if I sent in my ballot, how would they know which candidate I voted for, if they challenged my right to cast a vote? How do they know which side to take the vote from? I mean, what, are they just going to say, “Well, every one of these people who shouldn’t have voted, they all voted for the Democrat, so we take 8000 votes from the Democratic side.”? How was this ever going to work? Can somebody help me here?
Baud
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
I’m not sure of the specifics here, but generally they play percentages and hope it’s enough to tip the scales.
catclub
@J. Arthur Crank:
Needs a ‘hereby’ or it doesn’t count.
Also, tassels on the flag.
Emily68
Are the thousands of ballots Griffin wanted disqualified included in the final vote count? If so, and if a court ruled that they should be disqualified, how does anyone know which votes were in the disqualified batch? If some ballots were cured and some not, then again, how would they know which votes to subtract from the total?
I do ballot processing in WA state. After we verify the signature and the ballot was received by or postmarked by Election Day , the envelope is opened and separated from the ballot. After that happens, nobody knows which ballot is whose. How does it all work in NC?
waspuppet
I’ll say it again: This effort to overturn the election was put in place to give Donald Trump the state if he lost it to Harris. They’re only using it for the state Supreme Court because that’s the “opportunity” they had.
Still, I’m glad the Republican principle of “We only lose an election if you convince us we lost, and you cannot convince us of that” has been slowed down, if only for one cycle.
catclub
well all mail in votes are ( or the enclosing envelopes)
associated with specific voters, so they could s
separate all the mail-in ballots and count them separately. [What do you do if there is only one mail-in vote? How secret is the ballot?]
So I guess they should throw all the mail-in ballots together with the rest, and then you are right. How can you tell?
Philbert
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): Thank you! I have been wondering this since the start. Do they want us to go back to voting in the open?
NaijaGal
“The federal court has now ruled that changing the rules after the election was unconstitutional.”
Amen. Griffin shouldn’t be anywhere near the NC Supreme Court. Not sure he should be on any court or in the legal profession, frankly.
dc
@NaijaGal: He’s presently on the NC Appeals court.
Melancholy Jaques
@Omnes Omnibus:
I never wrote them off, our losses were narrow. Ohio, on the other hand . . .
dc
@Baud: It has cost us (Riggs, the NCDP, all donors, like me) a shit ton of $$ to pay for the lawyers, and Riggs has been doing two jobs since these challenges, NC State Supreme Court justice and defender of democracy and democratic elections because of these anti-democratic challenges to her victory in November.
NaijaGal
@dc: I know, and that’s a shame for the people of North Carolina.
NaijaGal
@dc: Thank you for donating!
zhena gogolia
John’s house is a soothing photo.
Baud
@dc:
The litigation is awful. But it would be 10 times worse if it had the effect of delaying her work on the court.
Juju
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): Griffin’s campaign originally asked to have 60,000 votes from almost exclusively Democratic leaning counties invalidated or excluded from the count. I actually was a bit surprised that I wasn’t on the list of voters to be excluded or voters who needed to cure their ballot. When I registered to vote the copy of my birth certificate was an actual Xerox copy, and at the time I was not required to give my social security number. You need certified copy of birth certificate and social security card now. Plus I live in a light blue area of NC. That’s how they were trying to game the system.
Juju
@Emily68: They do the same in NC, what the Griffin campaign was looking at were voter registration requirements and because some of the requirements changed over the years, if you had registered to vote with the previous requirements they wanted you to update to what is now required. If you didn’t update they were going to exclude by party registration, I assume.
Eolirin
Until the Supreme Court weighs in, I will not take a victory lap. It’s just getting set up for potential disappointment.
No telling what those fuckers will do.
RevRick
@Eolirin: The reasoning is too sound for even the Supreme Court to say, “Nope.” Though I’m sure Alito and Thomas will try.
Redshift
Reminds me of a rubber stamp a friend of mine had:
“REJECTED. Return in 30 days for final rejection.”
kindness
It’s particularly sweet that a Trump appointed Federal Judge told Republicans trying to overturn an election based on new rules put in place after the election had taken place to go fuck themselves. I am not one to give most Trump picks respect but… respect.
Captain C
@RevRick:
Alito: “As the ancient pre-Hammurabic codes showed, there is no right to vote and anyone’s vote can clearly be removed after the fact for any reason, so long as it’s a vote for a Democrat.”
Thomas: “None of them gave me an RV or a fancy vacation, so they’re not allowed to vote.”
Alito: “Also what Clarence said.”
WTFGhost
This is one of those issues that’s horrifying, because the NC courts should have applied the – I forget the legal term, but, you must raise issues in a timely manner. If you have complaints about voter registration, you should bring them before the election – preferably, before any votes are cast. If you wait too long – certainly after all votes are cast! – your complaint shouldn’t be heard. The courts exist to enforce the law, not to give you two chances to win an election. That the federal courts sunk the case is good, but it’s really bothersome that the NC courts couldn’t, or, didn’t, sink the case on their own.
Eolirin
@RevRick: You’d have thought that was true about the blocking of banning trans people serving in the military, especially since they ruled to do so previously iirc, and yet…