Donald Trump and Republicans walked away from the 2024 election with total control in Washington, so there's been little reason for GOP politicians to lie about Democrats stealing elections or attempting to overturn the will of the voters.
In North Carolina, Republicans mostly saw big wins. They lost a state Supreme Court race, though, so now a GOP judge is dusting off Trump's election denier playbook and claiming that more than 60,000 votes were illegally cast in an election that he lost by less than 800 votes. He is seeking to have the election overturned in his favor.
Jefferson Griffin, a current appeals court judge, lost to Justice Allison Riggs (D) last month in a race for a seat on the state's Supreme Court. He has protested his loss despite a recount confirming Riggs' victory. Griffin claims that more than 60,000 voters in the Tarheel state didn't submit their driver's license or Social Security numbers on voter registration forms, making them technically ineligible to vote. The North Carolina State Board of Elections is set to decide on the matter on Wednesday.
A statewide machine recount has already confirmed Riggs' victory by the exact number of votes — 734 — as was reported on Election Night. On Tuesday, results of a sample hand recount of several counties showed Riggs won by an additional 14 votes.
Among the voters whose votes Griffin is seeking to throw out are veterans and members of the military, as well as Riggs' parents, civil rights attorneys, and local Republican officials, her campaign tells Rolling Stone. Griffin hired the Republican political consulting firm Coldspark which claims to have found some 60,000 voters who had voted in November that he is claiming were ineligible.
Last week, Griffin filed a petition asking a state court to compel the North Carolina State Board of Elections to immediately decide whether to toss out the 60,273 votes he claims came from improperly registered voters. In the petition, lawyers for Griffin used very similar language about stolen elections and voter fraud that we've heard countless times from Trump when he argued that he should have been crowned the winner in 2020.
“On the evening of Election Day, Judge Griffin maintained a sizeable lead over his
opponent, Justice Allison Riggs,” lawyers for Griffin wrote in a petition filed Dec. 6. “However, as ballots continued to trickle in over the next week, Justice Riggs took the lead in the votes.”
A federal judge has already decided against a similar claim brought by the Republican National Committee, and sent the RNC's lawsuit back to a lower court. The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which has joined Riggs in her fight to hold on to her election win, says in a statement that Griffin is trying to “side-step” the federal court's order in that case.
“It would be fundamentally unfair to disqualify the votes of more than 60,000 North Carolinians — thereby denying them their fundamental right to vote — when each of those voters registered and voted in the manner provided by law,” the Lawyers Committee argued in court.
In addition to Wednesday's decision by the State Board of Elections, Griffin has sued in state court to have the election overturned, and the matter could rise to the level of the state Supreme Court itself. Meanwhile, Republicans in the North Carolina House have introduced a bill that would strip incoming Gov. Josh Stein (D) of his power to appoint the fifth member of the state election board — Democrats and Republicans get two board seats each — and instead give that power to incoming state auditor Dave Boliek, a Republican.
At issue are ballots from voters living overseas, including members of the military, a category of voter known as “UOCAVA,” short for the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, a federal law. The Lawyers Committee, Riggs' campaign, and others have argued that voters whose registrations don't include drivers' license or Social Security numbers shouldn't have their ballots canceled simply because the registration forms they filled out did not ask for that information — even if those forms violated state law.
In petitions filed in state court as well as official protests filed with the state board of elections, Griffin claims that the voters who illegally cast ballots in November include more than 60,000 people whose registrations do not include Social Security or driver's license numbers; 289 absentee voters who Griffin claims have never lived in North Carolina; and “thousands” of overseas voters whose absentee ballots were not sent in with a photo ID.
“This court need not let the public trust in the electoral process crumble further,” Griffin's attorneys wrote in one of his petitions. Griffin's campaign and his attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Coldspark, the Pennsylvania-based consulting firm that conducted the analysis leading to the judge's challenge.
Riggs' campaign says there are obvious explanations for the discrepancies cited by Griffin. First, veterans and members of the military could have used their military ID or passport numbers when filling out voter registration forms. Secondly, the database that Coldspark relied on to conduct its analysis — which was provided to the firm by the state election board — was likely not fully accurate or up-to-date.
Still, Griffin has pressed on, filing protests to his election loss and demanding in court that the board throw out 60,273 votes — most of which are expected to be for Riggs, according to an independent analysis that shows Black voters are twice as likely to have their registrations challenged under Griffin's protests.
If Griffin succeeds in convincing the election board—which is majority Democrat—to deny the more than 60,000 votes being called into question, Griffin would become the sixth Republican on the state Supreme Court. Currently, Riggs is one of just two Democrats serving on the court.
Griffin's claims of voters with improper registrations flooding voter rolls mirror those made by a Republican county election official who warned GOP legislators that ineligible voters could sway the November election toward Democrats up and down the ticket. (Trump won the state by 3 points.)
Prior to the election, Linda Rebuck of the Henderson County Election Board emailed three Republican members of the state legislature to express concerns about votes being illegally cast.
“I want to strongly state my belief that if you do not intervene immediately either legislatively or legally, we are going to lose NC to the Dems in November which will likely mean we lost the country,” Rebuck wrote in emails obtained by ABC News 13 .
Rebuck went on to make the unfounded claim that there was a statewide skyrocketing of improperly registered voters. “I believe this is a concerted effort to turn Henderson County blue,” she wrote. “I have heard numbers as high as 300,000 statewide so far. I believe that there is a statewide effort under way (sic) to undermine the election.”
Rebuck was reprimanded by the State Board of Elections, which called her emails “partisan statements” that undermined “the public's confidence in the fair administration of elections.”
In its response to Rebuck, the state board sought to allay her concerns over improper registrations, citing state law and other rules and procedures in place to prevent ineligible voters — like felons and noncitizens — from registering to vote. Griffin cited those responses in his own arguments that the 60,000-plus votes should be thrown out, setting up a possible legal fight over interpretations of state law regarding voter registration forms, as well as technical disputes over the forms themselves.
“Any North Carolinian (or American) who cares about free and fair elections should be concerned by these protests. They represent an attempt to engineer a new outcome rather than accepting the will of the voters,” Riggs campaign spokesperson Embry Owen tells Rolling Stone. “What is even more troubling is that they're being brought by a sitting appellate judge.”
