GOP-controlled N.C. Supreme Court blocks certification of Democrat as winner of close high court race
The order allows the state Supreme Court to hear a challenge by the Republican candidate in the race — who trails by just 734 votes — to have 60,000 ballots thrown out.
Democrat Allison Riggs leads Republican Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes in North Carolina's Supreme Court race.North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts via AP
Jan. 7, 2025, 9:05 PM GMT
By
Adam Edelman
The North Carolina Supreme Court
issued an order Tuesday that blocks state officials from certifying the Democratic candidate as the winner of a razor-thin race for the state’s high court.
In a 5-1 vote, all of the Republicans on the state Supreme court ruled to prevent the North Carolina State Board of Elections from certifying the results of the race, where Democratic Justice Allison Riggs holds a 734-vote lead over Republican Jefferson Griffin. Riggs recused herself from Tuesday’s order.
The decision by the court that Griffin is seeking to join, and that Riggs is seeking to remain on, allows the justices to now hear a challenge from Griffin that seeks to throw out 60,000 votes cast in November.
The order vowed to address the issue “expeditiously” and outlined a schedule that sets a deadline for all briefs in the case to be filed by Jan. 24.
Riggs, who was appointed to the state Supreme Court in 2023, emerged from Election Day with a narrow advantage over Griffin, triggering a series of recounts. A full machine recount and a partial hand recount showed Riggs leading Griffin by 734 votes, out of more than 5.5 million ballots cast.
Griffin subsequently filed hundreds of legal challenges across all of North Carolina’s 100 counties, claiming that nearly 60,000 people voted illegally. Lawyers for Griffin and the North Carolina Republican Party alleged that many of those voters didn’t have a driver’s license number or Social Security number on file in their voter registration records. The allegations were also related to overseas voters who haven’t lived in North Carolina and who failed to provide photo identification with their ballots.
But the state elections board, where Democrats have a 3-2 majority,
rejected all three categories of protests by Griffin last month. That prompted Griffin
to ask the state Supreme Court to take up his challenges.
The case was initially heard in federal court because the North Carolina Democratic Party had pre-emptively filed a federal suit in December that sought to ensure that all ballots in the race were counted.
But on Monday, the federal judge hearing the case — an appointee of President-elect Donald Trump — sent it back to the state level, siding with a request from Griffin. North Carolina's board of elections has filed an appeal of that decision with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, but that court has not scheduled initial briefs until February.
In its short Tuesday order, the state Supreme Court’s five Republican justices wrote that because the federal court remanded the case back to the state level, it would grant Griffin’s request for the election’s certification to be blocked so it could evaluate the claims regarding the 60,000 votes.
The lone Democrat on the court who voted wrote in a dissent that “the standard for a temporary stay has not been met here,” adding that “there is no likelihood of success on the merits and the public interest requires that the Court not interfere with the ordinary course of democratic processes as set by statute and the state constitution.”
North Carolina Democrats blasted Griffin and the Republicans on the Supreme Court over the latest development.
Former Gov. Roy Cooper
wrote on X that “Republicans want to toss thousands of legal votes in the trash because they don’t like the outcome.”
“This shouldn’t be about party politics — this should be about making sure every vote counts & that our elections still mean something,” Cooper wrote.
