Federal Judge Orders North Carolina to Certify Democrat Winner of Supreme Court Election

Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin has challenged the results of November’s election.

Absentee ballots in Raleigh, N.C., on Sept. 17, 2024. Allison Joyce/Getty Images

A federal judge ordered the North Carolina Board of Elections on May 5 to certify the results of the state’s 2024 Supreme Court election and confirm the victory of Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs after the results were challenged by a Republican judge.

In a 68-page ruling, District Judge Richard E. Myers II ruled in favor of Riggs, dismissing a request for injunctive relief filed by Judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican who trailed the Democrat by 734 votes in November’s election.

Myers wrote that Griffin cannot “change the rules of the game after it had been played.”

“The court cannot countenance that strategy ... which implicates the very integrity of the election and offends ’the law’s basic interest in finality,'” the judge wrote.

“Permitting parties to ‘upend the set rules’ of an election after the election has taken place can only produce ’confusion and turmoil [which] threatens to undermine public confidence in the federal courts, state agencies, and the elections themselves.'”

Myers’s ruling comes after Griffin sought to have more than 60,000 ballots that had been counted in the final tally on Nov. 5 thrown out, with the Republican arguing that voters did not provide their state driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers, as is required when registering under a 2004 state law.

The North Carolina Supreme Court on April 11 rejected Griffin’s bid, writing in its ruling that while the election board’s failure to ensure voters’ registrations conformed with the law was “deeply troubling,” the fault for those defects ultimately lay with the board, not voters.

“Under this Court’s longstanding precedent, mistakes made by negligent election officials in registering citizens who are otherwise eligible to vote will not deprive the citizens of their right to vote or render their vote void after they have been cast,” North Carolina’s Supreme Court wrote in its decision.

Still, the state’s highest court determined that thousands of overseas and military ballots that lacked photo identification as required by state law needed to verify their eligibility within a 30-day period known as a “cure period” or risk having their votes tossed out.

While the board said its plan to comply with the state Supreme Court’s order would impact, at most, 1,675 voters, Griffin contended that several thousand more should be at issue.

Retroactive Invalidation Violates Voters’ Rights, Judge Finds

Myers said the “case concerns whether the federal Constitution permits a state to alter the rules of an election after the fact and apply those changes retroactively to only a select group of voters, and in so doing treat those voters differently than other similarly situated individuals.”

“This case is also about whether a state may redefine its class of eligible voters but offer no process to those who may have been misclassified as ineligible,” he wrote.

The judge concluded that the retroactive invalidation of absentee ballots cast by overseas military and civilian voters violates voters’ equal protection and due process rights under the Constitution.

He directed the state’s elections board to certify the election results without implementing the “cure period” or removing any ballots from the final count.

Myers stayed his decision for seven days to allow Griffin time to appeal with the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Democrats welcomed the decision.

“Today, we won,” Justice Riggs said in a statement following the ruling. “I’m proud to continue upholding the Constitution and the rule of law as North Carolina’s Supreme Court Justice.”

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin also said the ruling “must bring an end—once and for all—to Republicans’ attempts to overturn a free and fair election.”

Griffin’s campaign told Reuters that his legal team is reviewing and evaluating the next steps.

The Epoch Times contacted Griffin’s office for further comment but did not receive a response by publication time.