Left-of-center activist groups file brief opposing Griffin’s ballot challenges

Seven left-of-center activist groups and 26 individual voters filed a court document Monday opposing Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to block the State Board of Elections from counting 65,000 or more ballots from the Nov. 5 election.

Griffin trails appointed incumbent Democrat Allison Riggs by 734 votes out of 5.5 million ballots cast statewide. But Griffin challenges targeted ballots as “unlawful.” The state Supreme Court issued a Jan. 7 say blocking the State Board of Elections from certifying Riggs as the election’s winner.

A Wake County Superior Court judge will consider Griffin’s ballot challenges Friday morning in Raleigh.

The NC State Conference of the NAACP, NC Black Alliance,  Common Cause Education Fund, Democracy North Carolina, El Pueblo, NC Asian Americans Together, and NC Poor People’s Campaign joined individual voters Monday in a request to file an amicus, or friend-of-the-court, brief in the case. Lawyers from Forward Justice and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice are representing the left-of-center groups and voters.

Griffin’s request to throw out disputed ballots “would change the rules of the 2024 election after the voters of our state already went to the polls,” according to the court filing. Griffin’s proposal “would invalidate the lawful ballots of eligible North Carolina voters who simply followed the rules of voting then in effect.”

“As nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations dedicated to protecting and advancing the rights of voters, and as the voters at risk of disenfranchisement if these protests are successful, proposed Amici have a substantial interest in this case and in ensuring that the election protest statutory scheme is properly applied, that the protestor is held to the correct burden of proof, and that the constitutional rights of the challenged North Carolina voters are protected,” the document continued.

The activist group’s court filing arrived on the same day that the State Board of Elections and Riggs faced a deadline to file their briefs in the case.

Griffin filed his latest Superior Court documents last week. Among the highlights: he asserts in a court filing that more than 500 people who voted in the recent state Supreme Court election have never lived in North Carolina or the United States.

Griffin initially challenged after the Nov. 5 election ballots of 267 voters he labeled “never residents.” But a series of briefs filed last Wednesday in Wake County Superior Court reveal that Griffin believes the number is significantly higher.

In three categories of protests, Griffin targets more than 65,000 ballots overall.

Griffin’s “never residents” made up the smallest group of voters in his initial ballot challenges. These voters are generally adult children of voters who had North Carolina residency before moving overseas.

“Our state constitution limits voters for state offices to people who actually reside in North Carolina,” Griffin’s lawyers wrote. “Nonetheless, the State Board allowed approximately 267 people to vote in the protested election who have never resided in North Carolina or anywhere else in the United States. These voters self-identified themselves as such, stating on a form ‘I am a USS [sic] citizen living outside the country, and I have never lived in the United States.’ Counting these ballots is unlawful.”

Griffin’s figure of 267 voters was based on “data from the State Board for a limited number of counties,” according to a footnote in the court filing.

With additional data from county election officials, “it’s apparent that at least 405 Never Residents voted in the election,” the footnote added.

“However, it’s unknown exactly how many Never Residents voted in the election, and whether that figure is more or less than the current vote margin in the protested election,” Griffin’s lawyers wrote. “Since the Board rejected this protest, another five counties have produced records indicating an additional 111 Never Residents who voted in the election, bringing the total [to] 516.”

“At this time, 60 counties have still not responded to public records requests on how many Never Residents voted in the election. It’s possible that this irregularity changed the outcome of the election, but because most counties have failed to respond to public records requests, it is not certain whether this irregularity, standing alone, is outcome-determinative,” the footnote concluded.

Beyond voters who have never lived in North Carolina, Griffin challenges 5,509 ballots from overseas voters who did not provide evidence of photo identification. Those ballots are confined to six larger, urban counties that tend to vote for Democratic candidates.

A separate footnote explained that Griffin’s lawyers had requested the information from “six counties in which a local election official confirmed that the county board accepted overseas ballots without requiring photo identification.” The footnote does not indicate whether the candidate’s lawyers attempted to contact other counties to address the same issue.

Griffin’s lawyers had mixed results securing lists of affected voters from counties that responded to their requests. Griffin also asked the state elections board to subpoena county elections boards for the information, “but the State Board did not do so.”

The third, largest category of targeted ballots involved more than 60,000 voters who appeared to have incomplete voter registration records.

“The State Board is an administrative agency that has broken the law for decades, while refusing to correct its errors,” Griffin’s lawyers wrote. “This lawlessness was brought to the Board’s attention back in 2023 and again in 2024, both before the 2024 general election, but the Board refused to follow the law. Now those chickens have come home to roost.”

“In the 2024 general election, the Board’s errors changed the outcome of the election for the open seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court,” Griffin’s court filings argued. “When those errors were raised again in valid election protests, the Board then claimed that it was too late to fix its law-breaking.”

“At bottom, this case presents a fundamental question: who decides our election laws? Is it the people and their elected representatives, or the unelected bureaucrats sitting on the State Board of Elections? If the Board gets its way, then it is the real sovereign here. It can ignore the election statutes and constitutional provisions, while administering an election however it wants,” Griffin’s lawyers wrote.

Each brief focuses on one of Griffin’s three categories of challenged ballots. One targets more than 60,000 “ballots that were cast by people who did not lawfully register to vote,” according to the brief.

“Since 2004, state law has required voter applicants to provide their drivers license or social security number before lawfully registering to vote. However, the State Board chose to ignore this law for decades,” Griffin’s lawyers wrote. “Thus, approximately 60,000 people cast votes in the protested judicial race without providing that statutorily required information on their voter applications. These voters were not allowed to cast a ballot in this race because they were not ‘legally registered’ to vote.”

A second brief targeted more than 5,500 “absentee ballots cast by people who failed to provide photo identification with their ballots.”

“Thousands of overseas voters cast ballots without providing their photo identification. But state law requires all voters to provide photo identification to vote; overseas voters casting absentee ballots do not get special treatment. The Board broke the law by counting these ballots,” Griffin’s lawyers argued.

The third brief emphasized the “never residents.” “Since 1776, our state constitution has limited eligible voters in state races to bona fide North Carolina residents. But ballots were accepted in the Supreme Court race from people who were born outside the United States and have never lived anywhere in the United States. Counting the votes of these ‘Never Residents’ was illegal,” according to the brief.

As Griffin, Riggs, and the State Board of Elections move forward with state court proceedings, they await a ruling from the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals. That court heard oral arguments last week. Riggs, the elections board, and left-of-center activist groups working with Democratic operative Marc Elias’ law firm all have asked the 4th Circuit to reverse a federal trial judge’s decision to send the case from federal court back to state court.

It’s unclear whether a 4th Circuit ruling favoring Riggs and the elections board would halt state court proceedings. Riggs’ lawyer asked the three-judge federal appellate panel to issue a decision before the scheduled Friday hearing in state court.

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