Riggs rejects Griffin’s request for NC Appeals Court clarification in election dispute

North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs is asking the state Appeals Court to reject a request from her opponent in the 2024 election for Riggs’ seat on the state’s highest court.

The opponent, Jefferson Griffin, asked the Appeals Court last week to issue an order clarifying its plan for resolving the disputed election. Griffin’s court filing accused the State Board of Elections of planning to defy the Appeals Court’s order.

Riggs, an appointed incumbent Democrat, leads Griffin, a Republican Appeals Court judge, by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast last fall. A Jan. 7 order from Riggs’ state Supreme Court colleagues has blocked the state elections board from certifying Riggs as the winner.

“Judge Griffin’s petition is flawed three times over,” Riggs’ lawyers wrote Friday. “It is premature. It is jurisdictionally improper. And it seeks a post-remand modification of this Court’s decision to require the State Board to comply with Judge Griffin’s preferred outcome on remand — all while the case is no longer pending in state court and the cure process about which Judge Griffin is complaining has been stayed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The petition should be denied.”

Griffin challenged more than 65,000 ballots cast in the fall election. The state elections board rejected his ballot challenges, and a Wake County Superior Court judge upheld that decision on Feb. 7. The state Appeals Court split, 2-1, on April 4 in reviving Griffin’s case.

With Riggs recused from the case, a unanimous state Supreme Court agreed on April 11 that elections officials should count 60,000 ballots from voters with incomplete voter registration records.

The high court split, 4-2, on two other types of challenged ballot. The majority agreed with the Appeals Court’s decision to throw out ballots of voters identified as “never residents.” These voters checked a box on a voter form indicating they had never lived in the United States. The number of ballots in that category has been listed as 266 or 267.

There’s a greater dispute about voters in a third category: military and overseas voters who did not provide photo identification when they cast their ballots.

The State Board of Elections says Griffin challenged 1,409 of those votes from Guilford County by the time of an election protest deadline. Court filings from Griffin and a court order from US Chief District Judge Richard Myers included voters from a handful of other counties in that category. The larger number is 5,509 challenged overseas ballots.

Opponents have criticized Griffin for focusing his protests on large Democratic-leaning counties while ignoring 25,000 overseas ballots cast in counties across the rest of North Carolina.

 The Appeals Court originally ordered state elections officials to give the challenged overseas voters 15 days to confirm that they have acceptable photo ID. The Supreme Court later extended that window to 30 calendar days. Voters who comply would have their votes counted. Voters who do not comply would have their ballots dropped from the final tally in the Supreme Court race.

This is the procedure described in court documents as a “cure” process.

Shortly after the state Supreme Court issued its ruling, the elections board, Riggs, the state Democratic Party, and left-of-center interest groups all pushed to have the case returned to Myers’ federal court.

Myers issued an order allowing the cure process to proceed but called on the elections board not to certify any election results before he had a chance to rule in the case. Myers also called for the elections board to clarify the total number of ballots that could be affected by the cure process.

The elections board responded that it expected to address no more than 1,675 ballots. That estimate prompted Griffin’s April 16 request for clarity from the Appeals Court. Griffin asked either for a writ of mandamus or an order clarifying the Appeals Court’s mandate. The writ of mandamus would have ordered the elections board to “faithfully comply” with the Appeals Court’s order.

As Griffin filed his request in state court, a 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals panel voted 2-1 to reverse Myers and block the cure process from starting. The process is on hold while Myers considers arguments for and against moving forward with Griffin’s ballot challenges.

Parties in the case will submit final briefs to Myers Monday. He indicated that he planned to issue a decision “as soon as practicable” without holding a hearing.

Riggs has continued serving on the state Supreme Court while the election contest has remained unresolved. Griffin continues to serve on the state Appeals Court.

The post Riggs rejects Griffin’s request for NC Appeals Court clarification in election dispute first appeared on Carolina Journal.