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Perhaps stung by blistering criticism that he and the Republican Party are trying to “steal” a judicial election after it was lost and over, N.C. Appellate Court Judge Jefferson Griffin last week changed his strategy in his effort to ultimately secure a seat on the N.C. Supreme Court.
Judge Griffin has now modified his bid to have 60,000 votes disallowed from the final total in his race against incumbent Democratic state Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs. Justice Riggs defeated Griffin in the Nov. 5th, 2024 election to retain her seat on the N.C. Supreme Court by more than 700 votes, as well as in two recounts.
That’s when Griffin filed a motion to have 60,000 votes removed from the final election total, claiming that the voter registration applications did not contain either the Social Security or partial driver’s license numbers once required. Amid growing protests, the Republican-controlled state Supreme Court has agreed to take up the matter.
But before they do, Judge Griffin has now decided, in a court filing to the very state Supreme Court he hopes to join, that 5,509 ballots from overseas should first be examined. That 5,509 would be from the initial 60,000 at issue, and should be disallowed, Griffin contends, because none of those voters showed photo identification as required by law.
If extracting only those 5,509 votes from the total is enough to change the results of the election between Griffin and Riggs, then, Griffin’s legal brief says, it may not be necessary to remove the balance of the 60,000.
Drastically lowering the number of votes he seeks to remove makes it easier for the Republican-controlled state Supreme Court to rule in his favor, observers say. However, if removing the 5,509 doesn’t win the race for him, Griffin then wants all 60,000 removed.
The N.C. Board of Elections was expected to respond to Griffin’s latest legal gambit by last Tuesday. Griffin has until January 24th to respond to their response.
National Democratic Party Chairman Jamie Harrison, an African American, has joined N.C. Democrats decrying Griffin and the Republican Party’s efforts to essentially overturn an election.
“They can’t stand the fact that they were rejected by North Carolina voters fair and square,” Harrison said during a recent press briefing. “They have become more and more desperate as the weeks have dragged on.”
Former N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper agreed, saying if Judge Griffin and the Republicans are allowed to get away with this attempt, they won’t stop anywhere they decide they should have won.
“The eyes of the entire country are on this race because the implications of having free and fair elections that are being questioned and potentially overturned are devastating, not just for Justice Riggs and the millions of North Carolinians who voted for her but for any election in the future.”
“If Republicans are successful in invalidating fair and legal votes past the election date like this, this will have broad implications across the country,” Cooper said.
And North Carolina Central University School of Law Prof. Irving Joyner warned that African Americans should pay very close attention to the Griffin-Riggs vote controversy, because, if successful, it could endanger their voting rights.
“Even though there isn’t a legal basis to throw out the votes of 60,000 legitimate voters, the right-wing oriented Supreme Court is now in a position to further subvert the North Carolina Constitution by endorsing this latest effort,” Joyner said.
