North Carolina judges block GOP law to strip governor’s election board powers | Gary D. Robertson and Makiya Seminera/Associated Press

North Carolina trial judges threw out on Wednesday another Republican attempt to strip the governor of his authority to appoint State Board of Elections members, declaring that a law shifting the task to the state auditor is unconstitutional. One registered Republican judge and one Democratic judge on the three-member panel sided with Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, who with his predecessor Roy Cooper sued over the law finalized by the GOP-dominated General Assembly in December. The third judge, a Republican, dissented. The governor picks the five board members, three of whom are traditionally members of the governor’s party. Appointments are made from candidates provided by the two major political parties. Read Article

North Carolina What to Know About the Legal Battle Over a State Supreme Court Race | Eduardo Medina and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

In North Carolina, the Republican candidate for a State Supreme Court seat has refused to concede to the Democratic incumbent, even though two recounts by a state elections board confirmed that he lost the November election by a few hundred votes. The Republican challenger, Judge Jefferson Griffin, who currently sits on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, has instead embarked on an extraordinary monthslong effort to toss out scores of ballots. The race is the last in the nation to be uncertified. Judge Griffin’s challenge has ping-ponged through federal and state courts. Most recently, the Democratic incumbent, Justice Allison Riggs, asked a federal court to overturn a State Supreme Court decision that could lead to thousands of military and overseas ballots being tossed. Read Article

North Carolina Supreme Court election could be determined by which ballots are subject to court orders | Gary D. Robertson/Associated Press

North Carolina’s Supreme Court decided last week that ballots from two categories should have been left out of the tally of an unresolved November election for a seat on the court because state laws otherwise makes the voters ineligible. But there is still legal friction about the number of ballots that state courts say must be scrutinized by election officials tasked with removing them from the count and giving voters the chance to provide additional information so their votes can remain. The universe of potential ballots is critical because Democratic Associate Justice Allison Riggs leads Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin by just 734 votes from more than 5.5 million ballots cast in what is the nation’s last undecided race from the 2024 general election. Read Article

Editorial: We’re Getting Dangerously Close to a Losing North Carolina Candidate Being Declared the Winner | Richard L. Hasen/Slate

In a preliminary order issued over the weekend likely designed to split the baby, a federal district court in North Carolina has told North Carolina election officials that they should follow a state court’s ruling to figure out which of thousands of military and overseas ballots cast by North Carolina voters should be thrown out in a dispute over the winner of a November state Supreme Court election. But the federal court also told election officials not to certify the winner of that election until it can decide if the state court–ordered remedy is unconstitutional. This is a recipe for disaster. The federal court should have heeded the advice of Justice Antonin Scalia in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case about not allowing a questionable redo of vote totals to be announced before there’s been a ruling on the legality of the redo. The judge’s order in North Carolina could well lead people to believe the state Supreme Court election was stolen no matter what happens. Read Article

North Carolina Supreme Court Halts Voter Eligibility Review in Contested Judicial Race | Nick Corasaniti and Eduardo Medina/The New York Times

The North Carolina Supreme Court temporarily blocked a lower court’s order from taking effect on Monday that would have required tens of thousands of people who voted in 2024 to verify their eligibility. The higher court stayed that order while it considers an appeal in a long-running dispute over the election. The ruling on Monday is the latest twist in a five-month battle over a seat on the very same State Supreme Court. Justice Allison Riggs, the Democratic incumbent, won the election in November over Judge Jefferson Griffin, the Republican challenger, by 734 votes. Judge Griffin has challenged the result, seeking to dismiss the ballots cast by roughly 65,000 people. He has argued that a majority of them were ineligible to vote because they did not supply certain required identification data when they registered — though the omission was because of administrative errors and no fault of the voters. The race is the last 2024 statewide election in the nation that remains uncertified. Read Article

As North Carolina Supreme Court case drags on, some voters can’t help but feel ‘targeted’ | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

In less than 24 hours, Danielle Brown left an out-of-state bus tour, came home to North Carolina to cast a vote in the 2024 general election and then boarded a plane to rejoin the tour. Now, her vote is one of nearly 67,000 ballots contested by Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin as part of his attempt to overturn his apparent loss to Democratic Judge Allison Riggs for a seat on the state Supreme Court. On Election Night, Griffin appeared to be the victor. However, as provisional and absentee ballots were counted, he slowly lost his lead. By the time election staff tallied official results during their canvasses, Riggs was up by a mere 734 votes. Two recounts confirmed Riggs’ win. Griffin then filed a series of election protests attempting to discard tens of thousands of ballots from the count, on grounds that the State Board of Elections illegally allowed certain categories of voters to cast a ballot. In the past four months, Griffin’s election protests have journeyed through state and federal courts. Read Article

North Carolina State Supreme Court Lawsuit Hurts Trust in Judiciary | Mary Ellen Klas/Bloomberg

The 2024 election still isn’t over in North Carolina. On Friday, the state Court of Appeals will hear arguments in a dispute over a judicial election for the state Supreme Court. After two recounts, Jefferson Griffin, a Republican appellate court judge, still trails incumbent North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat, by 734 votes out of the 5.5 million cast. Despite several unfavorable federal and state court rulings, Griffin won’t give up his fight. These sorts of disputes have become routine in the 25 years since Bush v. Gore put the outcome of the 2000 presidential election on hold for 34 days. That’s according to a group of legal scholars who convened this month at Florida State University’s College of Law for a conference on the legacy of the lawsuit. Read Article

North Carolina Legal Community: ‘Tens of Thousands of Voters Will Lose Their Voice’ If GOP’s Supreme Court Lawsuit Succeeds | Matt Cohen/Democracy Docket

A bipartisan coalition of more than 200 North Carolina jurists, attorneys, state government officials, bar leaders and legal educators signed on to a letter to Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin to end his effort to overturn the results of the 2024 election. A three-judge panel of the North Carolina Court of Appeals is set to hear oral argument Friday in Griffin’s ongoing lawsuit to overturn the results of the state’s Supreme Court election and have more than 65,000 legal ballots tossed out. Even after two recounts, Griffin narrowly lost the election to incumbent Justice Allison Riggs (D), but he wouldn’t concede — instead mounting a massive legal effort falsely claiming that the ballots were illegitimate. Read Article

North Carolina Supreme Court race hangs on unresolved ballot challenges | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

With voter confidence reportedly on the rise, it might be tempting to think that the battles over election integrity are over. But there’s one contest from the November 2024 general election that isn’t settled yet, even though it’s now March. And what’s happening in the North Carolina Supreme Court race is sending a clear signal that losing candidates will continue to contest the rules under which elections are conducted. Jefferson Griffin, a Republican, lost his bid for election to the court by just 734 votes to incumbent Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat who was appointed to a vacant seat in 2023 and then ran for a full term. Read Article

Opinion: North Carolina elections will be in chaos if Griffin wins case | Cherie Poucher, Kathy Holland, Larry Hammond and Meloni Wray/Raleigh News & Observer

We are among a group of 42 former county directors of elections who recently provided state judges with our perspective about Jefferson Griffin’s request to disqualify more than 65,000 voters in the 2024 N.C. Supreme Court contest. Members of our group come from every part of the state and have more than 750 years of combined experience in managing elections. Though normally behind-the-scenes administrators, we are speaking out now because of the significant impact this case could have on the integrity of our state’s election system. First, the election laws that voters relied on to cast their ballots in 2024 have been in place for years. Election directors relied on those rules to conduct the election in a uniform manner across the state, without favoritism or bias. Changing these laws and rules in the middle of an election is disruptive. Changing them after an election to apply to the election already held is chaos. How can the public trust our election system if the rules can be changed after the results are known in order to produce a different outcome? Read Article

North Carolina: Seeking to avoid repeat of Supreme Court election lawsuit, lawmakers eye changes for overseas voters | By Will Doran/WRAL

Democrats in the state legislature are planning to file a bill aimed directly at one of the legal tactics employed by Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin in his attempt to reverse the results of the 2024 election for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat. Griffin wants to throw out more than 60,000 voters’ ballots, including thousands of ballots cast by overseas voters. The state didn’t require overseas voters to show photo identification in 2024, even though most other voters did have to show ID. Griffin contends that’s wrong, and that their ballots shouldn’t count. No legislation would be able to shut down Griffin’s lawsuit as it plays out in the courts, but Democrats believe their proposal will at least stop future lawsuits from targeting overseas voters like deployed members of the military, by making it clear that they don’t have to show ID. Read Article

North Carolina: America’s last undecided election threatens our core democratic principles | Edward B. Foley/Salon

One of the most important premises of America’s election system in the 21st century is that the federal judiciary demands that the states must treat all cast ballots equally. Federal courts require states to uphold the constitutional principle of equal protection if the government of a state has determined that certain offices are to be decided by popular vote. Furthermore, states must adhere to the right to due process. After an election has been completed, federal law prohibits states from throwing out ballots that were cast in accordance with the prevailing understanding of established election practices in that state at the time of the election. These two bedrock principles of free and fair elections currently risk being weakened by a highly unusual election dispute playing out in North Carolina — and I am astounded that there’s any chance the courts would throw out the votes of North Carolinians who properly cast their ballots in last November’s election. Read Article

North Carolina: Ghost in the machine: ‘Signature verification’ program for voters has reliability issues, report says | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

It was an experiment that cost over $450,000, mostly to pay for verification equipment for 10 counties. County boards incurred an additional $8,000. The time commitment varied from county to county. In Durham County, the most populous participant, the program took 80 staff hours. In smaller areas like Bertie and Cherokee counties, the job only took an hour or two. And the results are mixed. In Rowan County, for instance, the signature verification software reviewed 308 absentee ballots during the primary election. It spit out 24 as potential mismatched signatures. Read Article

North Carolina Supreme Court won’t fast-track lawsuit challenging 60K ballots in race for one of its own seats | Will Doran/WRAL

The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled Thursday that it won’t fast-track the lawsuit by the Republican candidate for a Supreme Court seat who’s trying to throw out the ballots of more than 60,000 voters in an attempt to reverse the 2024 election results. The decision could play a major role in who ultimately wins the seat. Republican Jefferson Griffin received 734 fewer votes than Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs, recounts show. But the race hasn’t been certified as Griffin challenges the eligibility of tens of thousands of voters whom he says shouldn’t have been allowed to vote in the first place. Read Article

North Carolina: Like Trump, Jefferson Griffin May Be One Vote Away From Overturning a State’s Election Result | Billy Corriher/Democracy Docket

North Carolina’s highest court recently rejected Judge Jefferson Griffin’s request to bypass the lower courts and declare him the winner of last year’s state Supreme Court election, even though Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs received 734 more votes. But three of the seven justices signed on to a misleading concurring opinion implying — with zero evidence — that election fraud impacted the outcome. Like President Donald Trump in 2020, Griffin is seeking to overturn the results of an election that he lost. Trump’s election denialism was rejected by courts across the country — but in Wisconsin, Trump lost his baseless appeal to the state Supreme Court by just one vote. Judge Brian Hagedorn, a Republican appointee, voted with the liberals and authored a narrow 4-3 ruling to reject the conspiracy theories that formed the basis of Trump’s appeal. Read Article

North Carolina: Federal Ruling Says State Courts Should Decide Election Case | Eduardo Medina/The New York Times

A federal appeals court said on Tuesday that the legal battle in North Carolina over a State Supreme Court seat should be decided in state court. The opinion from a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit dealt a major blow to the Democratic incumbent, Allison Riggs, who narrowly won the seat in November but whose Republican challenger is seeking to flip the result. Justice Riggs had sought to have the issue resolved in federal court. Tuesday’s ruling means that her colleagues on the State Supreme Court, which has a 5-to-2 Republican majority, may end up settling the dispute. Read Article

North Carolina: They Followed Election Rules When They Cast Their Ballots. Now Their Votes Could Be Tossed Anyway. | Doug Bock Clark/ProPublica

Republican state appeals court Judge Jefferson Griffin has spent more than two months trying to overturn his narrow defeat for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat by arguing that around 60,000 ballots should be tossed out. But many residents have only recently learned that their votes are in danger of not being counted and say they have done nothing wrong. Elizabeth MacDonald, who registered as an unaffiliated voter and lives in an area of Western North Carolina ravaged by Hurricane Helene, made sure to cast a ballot, even though she was still consumed by both the devastation of the storm and the demands of caring for her infant. “The prospect of losing my vote for arbitrary and political reasons is especially painful given the personal and communal trauma we’ve endured over the past several months,” MacDonald wrote in a letter to Griffin. Read Article

GOP Already Controls the North Carolina Supreme Court – Why Are They Obsessed With Overturning That Race? | Courtney Cohn/Democracy Docket

While a single seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court, which already has an overwhelming Republican majority, may seem insignificant, this race has the potential to set a dangerous precedent for future election challenges. If Republicans use it to undermine the electoral system, consequences could be felt by voters across the country. “I spent 15 years as a civil rights attorney with a focus on voting rights. I know what disenfranchisement looks like,” said Justice Allison Riggs, the Democratic candidate in this race, in a Democracy Docket interview. “The right to vote and to have your voice heard is a fundamental, precious right, and our democracy only works if those in charge respect the will of the voters.” Read Article

Opinion: Republicans in North Carolina Are Treading a Terrifying Path | Frank Bruni/The New York Times

Nothing should be shocking after Jan. 6, 2021, when an American president’s scheming to overturn the legitimate results of a fair election culminated in the bloody breaching of the Capitol. Still, I’m aghast at the audacity of what Republicans here in North Carolina are up to. They are following in their leader’s footsteps and trying to steal an election. And if such an effort no longer seems as strange and sinister as it did before Donald Trump stormed onto the political scene and took a torch to whatever scruples still existed, that’s all the more reason to examine it closely. We need to be clear about where things stand. With an election denier about to move back into the White House and his disciples emboldened, our democracy is in danger. That’s the moral of the North Carolina story. It’s much, much bigger than this state. Read Article

North Carolina Supreme Court halts certification of apparent Riggs win | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

The North Carolina Supreme Court issued an order on Tuesday blocking the state from certifying a winner in the race for a seat on the high court. Granting the request of Republican Jefferson Griffin, who trails his opponent, Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs, by 734 votes, the court’s Republican majority issued a temporary stay that will prevent the State Board of Elections from certifying Riggs as the winner. Anita Earls, the only other Democrat on the court alongside Riggs, dissented, writing that “the public interest requires that the court not interfere with the ordinary course of democratic processes as set by statute and the state constitution.” Riggs recused herself from the case. Read Article

North Carolina: Stein, Cooper revamp lawsuit against GOP bill on elections | Luciana Perez Uribe Guinassi/Raleigh News & Observer

Incoming Gov. Josh Stein and Gov. Roy Cooper sought to expand a lawsuit on Monday to challenge a new wide-ranging law passed by the GOP-led legislature that removes power from incoming Democratic officeholders. Cooper and Stein had already filed a separate lawsuit earlier over the wide-ranging bill known as Senate Bill 382, but that case focused on a change making the State Highway Patrol a standalone department, removing it from the N.C. Department of Public Safety. On Monday, Cooper and Stein added to an ongoing lawsuit filed in Wake County Superior Court to target the portion of SB 382 that transfers the governor’s power to appoint members of the State Board of Elections to the state auditor, as well as the part of the bill that shifts the power to appoint the chair of each county board of elections from the governor to the auditor. Read Article

North Carolina: Republican Appeals Court Judge Griffin asks State Supreme Court to intervene in his challenge of 60,000 ballots | Kyle Ingram/Raleigh News & Observer

Republican Jefferson Griffin is asking the North Carolina Supreme Court to intervene in his effort to challenge over 60,000 ballots cast in his race for the high court. The State Board of Elections dismissed Griffin’s ballot protests, but has not taken a final step of certifying the election. Griffin now asks the court, which has a 5 to 2 Republican majority, to prohibit the board from certifying the election and to throw out the challenged ballots. Read Article

North Carolina GOP Grabs Control of  Election Boards, Rushing to Negate November Losses | Alex Burness/Bolts

Around 2:30 on Wednesday afternoon, the North Carolina State Board of Elections rejected a bid by Republican Jefferson Griffin to toss about 60,000 votes cast in a state supreme court race he narrowly lost. Griffin had filed six different protests and on all but one the board voted on party lines: Its three Democratic members sided against him, outvoting the two Republican members. “The importance of people being able to vote and not be disenfranchised is extraordinarily important,” Alan Hirsch, the Democratic chair of the state elections board, said Wednesday as the board shot down Griffin’s bid. “It’s a fundamental constitutional right. It’s what makes our democracy run.” Read Article

North Carolina G.O.P. Wants to Disqualify 60,000 Ballots in Race Was Decided by 734 Votes | Michael Wines/The New York Times

From voter ID laws to district map-drawing to judges redeciding cases, North Carolina has long been a laboratory of sorts in ways to amass political power. In recent years, Republicans in particular have changed both state laws and election rules to hamstring Democrats’ influence. Now, one of the closest statewide elections in North Carolina history is offering a vivid example of the maneuvering in play to gain an upper hand. A lengthy recount of more than 5.5 million ballots from the November election that ended last week showed that an incumbent Democrat on North Carolina’s state Supreme Court, Allison Riggs, held a 734-vote edge over Jefferson G. Griffin, a Republican judge on the state Court of Appeals. REead Article

North Carolina Supreme Court GOP Candidate Asks for Hand Recount as Party Pushes Controversial Bill | Courtney Cohn/Democracy Docket

North Carolina Supreme Court GOP candidate Jefferson Griffin requested a hand recount after he challenged thousands of ballots across the state in the tight race against his Democratic opponent Allison Riggs, who declared victory. “Recounts are a normal part of the process in a close race. What isn’t normal is the way my opponent is attempting to engineer a new outcome by challenging more than 60,000 votes across our state,” Riggs said in a post on X Monday. A couple of weeks ago, Griffin asked for a machine recount, which showed that Riggs won the election. In an email statement on Tuesday, Riggs said that the “results of the recount were identical to the original vote count” and that she won the race. Read Article

North Carolina Republicans pass sweeping changes to consolidate power | Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

Republicans in North Carolina rushed a bill through the legislature this week to boost their power before they lose their supermajority, approving a measure to give their party more control over elections, eliminate the jobs of judges who have ruled against them and limit the authority of the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general. Republicans hold three-fifths majorities in the legislature and have used that power to override vetoes by Gov. Roy Cooper (D). In January, they’ll lose the ability to easily roll back vetoes by incoming Gov. Josh Stein (D) because they’ll no longer hold such a large majority in the North Carolina House. The GOP response has been to flex their power now, while they still have it. They loaded up a $227 million Hurricane Helene relief package with an array of provisions that weaken the hand of Stein and other Democrats in the battleground state. Hours after unveiling the proposals, the state House passed the bill Tuesday night, and the state Senate approved it Wednesday. Read Article

North Carolina appeals court rejects RNC request to set aside ballots from overseas voters who never lived in state | Devan Cole/CNN

The North Carolina Court of Appeals on Tuesday unanimously rejected a Republican bid to have election officials segregate overseas ballots cast by people who have never resided in the state for additional checks of the voters’ eligibility. The court’s decision is the latest blow to Republican efforts to attack overseas ballots in critical battleground states. Earlier Tuesday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed a challenge to the vetting procedures for overseas ballots in that state. And last week, a state judge in Michigan sided against the GOP in a case targeting ballots cast by people who had never lived there but were eligible to vote in the state because of familial ties to it. Read Article

As North Carolina begins voting, hurricane devastation complicates casting ballots | Gabe Gutierrez and Bianca Seward/NBC

The violent water smashed into the fellowship hall, pushing a propane tank through a wall, encasing the structure in mud and devastating the church in this mountain community just over a month before the hotly contested presidential race draws to a close. “This is a flood like we’ve never had,” said Larry Jones, a deacon at Minneapolis Baptist Church, one of the polling places in rural Avery County ravaged by the remnants of Hurricane Helene last month. The site is one of several in the county unable to open in time for the election. Three days after the storm, Jones and his wife managed to hike up to his elderly mother-in-law’s house by wading through mud up to their knees. The roads and bridges were blocked. He made it to his church a few days later and has been organizing volunteer efforts ever since. Read Article

North Carolina: How Helene Has Upended Election Plans | Eduardo Medina and Mark Barrett/The New York Times

For decades, the North Fork Voting House has served as the official polling place for nearly 600 residents in the small mountain community of Creston, N.C. The tiny cinder block building was recently updated with a freshly painted white door, handmade curtains for the voting booths and a new metal roof. But the voting house was one of several structures destroyed by the remnants of Hurricane Helene late last month, uprooted by the epic flooding and mudslides that swept through western North Carolina. By the time the floodwaters subsided, the new metal roof was wrapped around a tree in a precinct worker’s yard. “You just think, ‘Really, something else?’” said Devon Houck, the director of the Ashe County Board of Elections. “There is already a lot of scrutiny, a lot of eyes watching North Carolina because of its swing state status, and now this.” Read Article

North Carolina: Hurricane Helene upends election planning in some parts of state | Steve Harrison/NPR

North Carolina election officials said Tuesday that early voting would start as planned on Oct. 17, including in counties that were devastated by flooding from Hurricane Helene. But they don’t know how many early voting sites and Election Day polling places might be unusable in the swing state because of the storm. “There may be polling places impacted by mudslides, there may be polling places inaccessible because of damaged roads, and there may be polling places with trees that have fallen on them,” said Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections. North Carolina is still trying to assess the damage from Helene, which caused massive flooding in the mountainous western part of the state. Read Article