NC Supreme Court election dispute now in Myers’ hands

The next major development in North Carolina’s unresolved 2024 state Supreme Court election is likely to depend on a ruling from a federal trial judge. There’s no deadline for his decision, though he has pledged to act “as soon as practicable.”

Monday marks the deadline for final written briefs addressed to US Chief District Judge Richard Myers. Myers’ court orders have indicated that he plans no oral arguments in the dispute pitting Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin against the State Board of Elections and Democrat Allison Riggs.

So observers of the nearly six-month legal battle over Riggs’ state Supreme Court seat will watch and wait for a decision from Myers’ courtroom.

Riggs is an appointed incumbent. Griffin is a state Appeals Court judge. Riggs leads Griffin by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast last fall. Yet Riggs’ state Supreme Court colleagues issued a stay in January that has blocked the state elections board from certifying her as the winner.

Griffin challenged more than 65,000 ballots from the November election. The state’s highest court agreed unanimously this month that most of those ballots will count in the final tally. But challenges to as many as 5,700 ballots remain in question. Most of those ballots involve military and overseas voters who provided no photo identification. A smaller number of targeted ballots involve “never residents,” voters who checked a box on a voter form indicating they have not lived in the United States.

An April 11 state Supreme Court order spells out a “cure” process to determine whether the disputed ballots will remain in the final vote count.

Seven different parties submitted briefs to Myers Friday.

Griffin urges Myers to reject requests from Riggs, the elections board, and other interested parties to throw out the cure process. His lawyers emphasized state courts’ role in addressing a dispute for an election to a state office.

“Movants make no attempt to reconcile their bold request for federal intervention with a respect for the state judiciary,” Griffin’s lawyers wrote. “’[T]he federal judiciary should proceed with great caution when asked to consider disputed elections.’ The Court should deny the motions and dismiss the cases.”

Riggs’ brief criticized Griffin’s approach to the dispute.

“The opening briefs lay bare the unprecedented, unconstitutional nature of Judge Griffin’s protests,” Riggs’ lawyers wrote. “In his brief, Judge Griffin ignores settled due process law and takes critical language from other courts out of context. He imposes the wrong legal framework upon the undue burden and procedural due process analyses. He distorts the facts bearing on this Court’s equal protection inquiry and disregards the realities facing those individuals hurt by his election challenges. And most surprisingly, after this Court expressly reserved jurisdiction of the federal issues, he now argues once again that this Court should abstain from considering them.”

The State Board of Elections argued that Griffin’s requests “would require the Board to violate federal law. This Court should further permanently enjoin the remedial process ordered by the state courts.”

Elections officials emphasized the issue of due process. “Judge Griffin altogether ignores the reliance interests of our State’s voters,” the elections board’s lawyers wrote. “Yet it is undisputed that the challenged voters did everything that they were asked to cast a ballot under the rules in place at the time of the election. Upsetting these reliance interests months after the election is fundamentally unfair.”

The North Carolina Democratic Party, the League of Women Voters of North Carolina, and left-of-center activist groups working with Democratic operative Marc Elias’ law firm all filed briefs Friday supporting Riggs and the elections board. Secure Families Initiative, a nonprofit group of military spouses and family members, added a friend-of-the-court brief critiquing Griffin’s ballot challenges.

Myers issued an April 12 order that would have allowed the cure process to move forward while he considered the legal arguments. The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals issued a 2-1 ruling on April 22 that reversed Myers and placed the cure process on hold.

As Myers ponders the case’s legal issues, the North Carolina Court of Appeals could clarify how many ballots could be subjected to the cure process. The elections board has indicated that it plans to address no more than 1,675 ballots, mostly involving overseas voters tied to Guilford County who provided no photo identification.

Griffin is pushing to include roughly 4,000 more overseas voters. He asked the state Appeals Court to issue an order clarifying the numbers. Riggs filed paperwork Friday objecting to that request.

Though the dispute is now nearly 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.

The post NC Supreme Court election dispute now in Myers’ hands first appeared on Carolina Journal.