North Carolina Launches Voter Roll Program That Could Disenfranchise Tens of Thousands | Jen Rice/Democracy Docket

North Carolina formally launched a project Thursday that could disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters, despite pushback from national Democrats. The plan, conceived by a former top GOP legislative aide, would create a two-tiered system for some voters with missing information — allowing them to vote in federal elections, where legal protections for voters are stronger, but not in state and local contests. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) sued North Carolina last month, alleging that the state failed to collect information from voters required by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). In response, the North Carolina State Board of Elections released a plan that requires voters with missing information to vote a provisional ballot unless they respond to mail notifications by providing the additional information. Read Article

North Carolina county elections boards shift from Democratic to GOP control | Lynn Bonner/NC Newsline

North Carolina’s elections shakeup extended to all 100 counties Tuesday as local boards flipped from Democratic to GOP control and State Auditor Dave Boliek appointed Republican chairs to lead them. The changes expand GOP control of elections to the local level. Last month, Boliek appointed a Republican majority state elections board under a new law that took appointment power away from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein. Stein has sued over the law, but state appellate courts have allowed it to go into effect. Historically, the governor’s party has held majorities on the state and county boards. Local boards of election are the on-the-ground decision makers that pick polling locations, set early voting schedules and hours, and decide whether provisional ballots should be accepted. Read Article

North Carolina: Changing of the guard. New and outgoing elections directors offer opposing perspectives. | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

Some might say newly appointed State Board of Elections Executive Director Sam Hayes wrote his own job into law. As general counsel for the Speaker of the House, Hayes had a hand in writing Senate Bill 382, the Tropical Storm Helene relief bill that also shifted election appointment power from the Democratic governor to the newly elected Republican state auditor. As a result, the State Board of Elections got a new Republican majority that then chose a new executive director. After a state court allowed the law to go into effect, the board chose Hayes, a Republican attorney whose election experience includes defending North Carolina’s voter ID law, legislators’ redistricting plans and most recently, Senate Bill 382. “So I worked on the legislation, I’ve defended the legislation, and now I’m here,” Hayes said in a recent interview. Read Article

North Carolina’s high court says elections board shift can continue while appeals carry on | Gary D. Robertson/Associated Press

A divided North Carolina Supreme Court confirmed Friday that it was OK for a new law that shifted the power to appoint State Board of Elections members away from the Democratic governor to start being enforced earlier this month, even as the law’s constitutionality is deliberated. The Republican majority on the court declined or dismissed requests that Gov. Josh Stein made three weeks ago to block for now the enforcement of the law approved last year by the GOP-controlled General Assembly shifting authority to Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek. In late April, some trial judges hearing Stein’s lawsuit declared the law unconstitutional and said the law couldn’t be carried out. Read Article

North Carolina: Trump DOJ sues over election claims similar to Jefferson Griffin lawsuit | Will Doran/WRAL

North Carolina has failed to comply with federal law requiring accurate voter lists and isn’t doing enough to fix those deficiencies, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged in a lawsuit Tuesday against the North Carolina State Board of Elections. The lawsuit, filed by the administration of Republican President Donald Trump, says the state should’ve done more to verify the identity of voters in the state to ensure no fraud is occurring. It specifically homes in on thousands of people from whom the state’s database of registered voters doesn’t include a driver’s license number or Social Security number. Many of the DOJ’s demands are already underway, due to previous lawsuits over those voters with missing information, but the lawsuit says the state’s efforts to fix the problems haven’t been robust enough. It seeks to enforce a 30-day deadline for the state to contact all the voters in question and either get their information or remove them from the list of registered voters. Read Article

North Carolina: Foregone conclusion. Legal struggle over elections appointment power essentially ends with court ruling. | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

Technically, Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s lawsuit against Republican leaders over the transfer of his election appointment power to the state auditor could go on for a number of months. But practically, it’s over. Friday evening, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the North Carolina Court of Appeals did not break any rules by allowing the power shift to go into effect on May 1, when a new State Board of Elections was appointed by Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek. While the court did not technically rule on the state constitutional questions at play — does the power shift violate separation of powers or the governor’s duty to faithfully execute the law? — it clearly signaled its approval of the power shift in a 5-2 decision. Read Article

After North Carolina Supreme Court Win, Democrats Lose Control of Board That Sets Voting Rules | Doug Bock Clark/ProPublica

Last week, North Carolina Democrats scored a victory when Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin, who’d lost a tight race for the state’s Supreme Court, finally conceded defeat after a six-month legal battle to throw out ballots that he contended were illegitimate. But that same morning, the party suffered a setback that may be more consequential: losing control of the state board that sets voting rules and adjudicates election disputes. The board oversees virtually every aspect of state elections, large and small, from setting rules dictating what makes ballots valid or invalid to monitoring compliance with campaign finance laws. In the Supreme Court race, it consistently worked to block Griffin’s challenges. Read Article

North Carolina: Will a disputed Supreme Court race push defeated candidates to contest results? | Sam Levine/The Guardian

A disputed North Carolina state supreme court race that took nearly six months to resolve revealed a playbook for future candidates who lose elections to retroactively challenge votes, observers warn, but its ultimate resolution sent a signal that federal courts are unlikely to support an effort to overturn the results of an election. Democrat Allison Riggs defeated Republican Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes last November out of about 5.5m cast. But for months afterwards, Griffin waged an aggressive legal fight to get 65,000 votes thrown out after the election, even though those voters followed all of the rules election officials had set in advance. The effort was largely seen as a long shot until the North Carolina court of appeals accepted the challenge and said more than 60,000 voters had to prove their eligibility, months after the election, or have their votes thrown out. The Republican-controlled North Carolina supreme court significantly narrowed the number of people who had to prove their eligibility, but still left the door open to more than 1,000 votes being tossed. Read Article

North Carolina: New Republican majority on elections board replaces the executive director | Lynn Booner/NC Newsline

The new Republican majority on the state Board of Elections in its first meeting voted to replace elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell with Sam Hayes, general counsel to House Speaker Destin Hall. This is the first state elections board with members appointed by the state Auditor. In the past, a majority of the election board’s members were of the same political party as the governor. After Democrat Josh Stein won the governorship last year, the Republican legislative supermajority passed a law stripping governors of their power to appoint members. That lead to the new majority-Republican elections board. Read Article

North Carolina: Republican concedes long-unsettled Supreme Court election to Democratic incumbent | Gary D. Robertson/Associated Press

The Republican challenger for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat conceded last November’s election on Wednesday to Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs, two days after a federal judge ruled that potentially thousands of disputed ballots challenged by Jefferson Griffin must remain in the final tally. In a statement provided by his campaign, Griffin said he would not appeal Monday’s decision by U.S. District Judge Richard Myers, who also ordered that the State Board of Elections certify results that after two previous recounts showed Riggs is the winner by 734 votes from over 5.5 million ballots cast in the race. Griffin’s decision sets the stage for Riggs to be officially elected to an eight-year term as an associate justice in the nation’s ninth-largest state. Read Article

North Carolina: Court of Appeals clears path for Republicans to take over Board of Elections. Stein to appeal | Will Doran/WRAL

Control over elections administration in North Carolina could flip from Democratic to Republican control within hours, following a decision late Wednesday from the state Court of Appeals. Elections decisions in North Carolina are made by political appointees, who make calls on issues such as where and when to open early voting sites, which allegations of campaign finance violations or voter fraud to refer to prosecutors, and whether to confirm election results. Last week, a trial court ruled that Republican state lawmakers violated the constitution when they tried taking control of the elections board away from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein. Read Article

North Carolina: Griffin’s case could open an ‘Pandora’s Box’ for election law | Ned Barnett/Raleigh News & Observer

The legal effort to overturn the results of North Carolina’s 2024 state Supreme Court race is an affront to all of the state’s voters, but it potentially also could provide a blueprint for overturning election results in other states. At issue is a lawsuit by Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, who lost his bid to unseat Justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes out of 5,540,090 votes cast. Griffin asked that more than 65,000 votes be tossed because of flaws in the voters’ registration, the lack of photo ID on military and overseas absentee ballots and a lack of state residency by some voters. The Griffin lawsuit has ping-ponged between state and federal courts for nearly six months and is currently pending in federal court. Ultimately, this case could endure all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the 6-3 Republican majority might uphold Griffin’s attempt to change the rules that govern an election after the election. Read Article

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