Raleigh, North Carolina — A candidate in North Carolina’s Supreme Court race asked the court Wednesday to block election officials from counting more than 60,000 ballots in his race that he says he did not vote legally.
Jefferson Griffin, a Republican on the appeals court, has filed a request for the Supreme Court to intervene in his race with Democratic Associate Justice Allison Riggs. After a recount and protest hearings initiated by Griffin and other GOP candidates, Riggs leads Griffin by 734 votes out of 5.5 million votes cast in the Nov. 5 election. The Associated Press has not yet announced the race.
The state Board of Elections voted last week to dismiss the protest. Typically, the next step for a dissatisfied trailing candidate who wants to prevent the board from issuing a certificate of election to a competitor is to appeal to Wake County Superior Court. Riggs declared himself the winner and his campaign said Griffin should concede.
But Griffin instead went to the Supreme Court and asked the justices to rule by this Monday on his request to prevent the certificate from being issued to Riggs and delay the 10-day deadline for him to file an appeal in Wake County court.
Griffin’s lawyers said the delay would give the justices time to consider his arguments as to why three types of votes should not be counted in the race against Riggs. Five Republicans serve on the seven-member Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has been a partisan flashpoint in the state over the past two years in court battles involving redistricting, voter identification photos and other voting rights.
The state Democratic Party filed suit in federal court earlier this month to block the board from discarding ballots in violation of the U.S. Constitution and election laws. Democratic officials said they were concerned the Supreme Court could ultimately side with Republicans and eliminate contested ballots, threatening Riggs’ victory. Griffin said in the brief that filing Wednesday’s filing directly with the Supreme Court would prevent further delays if state Democrats try to move the issue to federal court.
The issue Griffin raised again Wednesday focuses on three types of voting. Votes cast by people whose voter registration records include no driver’s license or a partial Social Security number; Overseas voters who have never lived in the United States but whose parents are considered residents of North Carolina, military or overseas voters who did not provide a copy of a photo ID with their ballot.
The state committee, comprised of three Democrats and two Republicans, rejected Griffin’s complaint in a 1-3-2 vote in a series of votes mostly along party lines. The commission’s written order states in part that no reasonable grounds were presented to show that election laws were violated or that fraud occurred.
Griffin’s attorney, Troy Shelton, rejected Riggs’ claims that his client is trying to change election rules after the election. For example, the registration record requirement went into effect in 2004, while the residency requirement to vote in North Carolina dates back to 1776.
“The board was forced to discount votes cast in violation of state law,” Shelton wrote Wednesday.
But board Chairman Alan Hirsch said at a protest hearing last week that the idea of registered voters throwing out their votes is “an abomination to our democratic system and cannot be tolerated.”
Last week’s dismissed protests also stemmed from three Republican legislative candidates who were trailing in their respective General Assembly races. Appeals of dozens of additional complaints filed by Griffin and legislative candidates are scheduled to be heard Friday by the state Board of Elections. The AP did not call two of these races.
Once protests against General Assembly candidates are exhausted, their recourse is not to go to court but to formally ask the General Assembly chamber itself to decide who wins the seats they want.
In one of the seats, Republican Rep. Frank Sossamon trails Democratic challenger Bryan Cohn by about 230 votes. Cohn’s victory means Republicans fall one seat short of maintaining their current veto-proof majority starting next month.
