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Jefferson Griffin, the Republican N.C. Appellate Court judge, who legally challenged the double-recount results of the November 2024 election in which his opponent, incumbent N.C. Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs, won, formally conceded the race to Riggs Wednesday morning (May 7) after a federal judge ordered that all ballots cast in the disputed contest remain untouched
In a statement, Judge Griffin said he would not appeal the 68-page ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Richard Myers, although he did not agree with it.
The election was to decide who would retain Justice Riggs’ seat on the N.C. Supreme Court for the next eight years.
Judge Myers’ Monday decision cancelled out previous rulings by the N.C. Supreme Court and the N.C. Court of Appeals, both of whom agreed to varying degrees with Judge Griffin to discount votes from the 5.5 million people cast during the November 2024 election.
Griffin had alleged in various legal challenges that, due to what he says was an administrative error on the part of the state Board of Elections, upwards of 60,000 votes cast in the Riggs-Griffin election should not count, hoping that by doing so, he would ultimately be declared the winner.
Justice Riggs, one of two Democrats on the state Supreme Court, countered that it was not only wrong, but unconstitutional to remove votes from an election after it has already ended.
“Today, we won. I‘m proud to continue upholding the Constitution and the rule of law as North Carolina’s Supreme Court Justice,” Justice Riggs said in a statement after federal Judge Myers issued his ruling Monday night.
In his ruling Monday night, Judge Myers stated, “…this case is not about the prerogative of North Carolina courts to interpret North Carolina law. Without question, those courts are the principal expositors of state law. This case is also not about North Carolina’s primacy to establish rules for future state elections; it may do so. Rather, this case concerns whether the federal Constitution permits a state to alter the rules of an election after the fact and apply those changes retroactively to only a select group of voters, and in so doing treat those voters differently than other similarly situated individuals.”
Judge Myers concluded, “This case is also about whether a state may redefine its class of eligible voters but offer no process to those who may have been misclassified as ineligible. To this court, the answer to each of those questions is ‘no.’”
