Recount confirms Riggs victory in NC Supreme Court Race, as focus shifts to 60,000 challenged ballots

The North Carolina State Board of Elections announced that a partial hand recount did not change Justice Allison Riggs’ victory over Republican Jefferson Griffin. So if Griffin winds up on the court, it will not be because legal ballots were counted, it will be because legal votes were thrown out.

There have now been three official counts of the votes in the 2024 election for state Supreme Court and Allison Riggs has won them all.

The initial count of all legal ballots showed Riggs winning by 734 votes and a machine recount weeks later showed the same margin. But a smaller hand recount, sought by her Republican opponent Jefferson Griffin and completed on Tuesday, did change the total: Riggs increased her lead by 14 votes.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections (BOE) announced Tuesday that since the partial hand recount did not change the results, there would be no more recounts.

So if Griffin winds up on the court now, it will not be because legal ballots were counted, it will be because legal votes were discarded.

Griffin and state Republicans, based on scant evidence and legal theories already rejected by courts in separate cases, have formally challenged more than 60,000 ballots, the vast majority of which were likely cast by eligible voters. 

Most of those challenges are of voters whose driver’s license or partial social security number information aren’t included in a state registration database. Federal law requires this info to be included, and a similar lawsuit filed by Republicans before voting began claimed that noncitizens could be hiding among the registrations missing the info. But that legal claim has already been unanimously rejected by the BOE in a separate case, and by a federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump.

The reality is that there are many reasons that those details could be missing from the database, and the vast majority of voters disenfranchised by such a culling would be lawfully registered voters. An analysis of the 60,000 ballots conducted by the News & Observer found that Black voters were twice as likely as white voters to have their ballots challenged in Griffin’s count.  The BOE will hold a hearing on Wednesday to consider Griffin’s challenges.

No matter what the board decides, however, it will not likely be the final word. 

Likely destined for the courts

Griffin can appeal the BOE’s decision to Wake County Superior Court, and then ultimately to the State Supreme Court, where Republicans hold a 5-2 majority. (Riggs is one of the two Democrats.)

But the North Carolina Democratic Party has also filed a lawsuit in federal court, seeking to block the Board of Elections from deciding in Griffin’s favor, something it’s unclear that they would do anyway, and it’s possible that the rocky road ahead leads to federal court instead. 

The competing legal tangles and overlapping lawsuits raise several thorny legal questions about where this will ultimately be resolved.

But those questions are beside the point, Embry Owen, Riggs’ campaign manager said in an interview on Tuesday,

“It’s important to step back and see the forest from the trees. This is not normal. It’s really important for North Carolinians to understand that,” Owen said. 

“Whether it goes into federal court, state courts — we can have that discussion, but it is not a normal post-election process to say ‘60,000+ people who voted, who’ve been voting for years or decades, some of whom are elected officials, both Republicans and Democrats, let’s toss out those votes to engineer a new outcome,’” Owen said.

“That’s the forest, and then the trees are ‘well, does it get hashed out in state court or federal court?,’ We have to talk about the forest first.”

‘It makes no sense to me’

Voter challenges are usually restricted to specific claims against individual voters, not tens of thousands of voters across all demographics. The 60,000 ballots Griffin is contesting include unaffiliated voters, Democrats, Republicans, prominent doctors, and Riggs’ parents, all of whom have been voting without any issues for years.

RELATED: ‘I feel powerless’: The NC Supreme Court race could hinge on whether thousands of likely legal ballots are thrown out 

Dr. Amy Bryant, a Durham physician who filed a lawsuit last year against North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban, was surprised to get a notice from the North Carolina Republican Party that her vote was being challenged.

She registered to vote in North Carolina soon after moving to Durham in June of 2011.

“I was the last person I expected to see on that list,” Bryant told Cardinal & Pine last week.

“I’m feeling a huge range of emotions. I’m feeling angry. I’m feeling frustrated. I’m feeling outraged. I’m feeling just undermined,” she said. “It’s an extremely enraging feeling and infuriating place to imagine that my vote could potentially not count when I am an upstanding citizen who votes in almost every election.”

Wade Leatham, a Republican member of the Wayne County Board of Education, learned he was on the list from a reporter with NC Newsline.

He voted for Griffin.

“It makes no sense to me,” Leatham said.

‘What’s happening in North Carolina is sinister’

Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, held a press conference in Raleigh on Tuesday to tie Griffin’s voter challenge to other Republican efforts to take power from Democrats. 

“Jefferson Griffin and the NC GOP truly want people to somehow believe that out of all the other election results in this state, this is the only one that’s not legitimate,” Clayton said. 

“If you don’t believe right now that Republicans will do everything they can to strip this win from us, you haven’t been paying attention again to history in the state of North Carolina,” she said, connecting the dots to Senate Bill 382, a bill passed by the Republican-controlled legislature that takes several powers from newly elected Democrats, including Attorney General-elect Jeff Jackson, and gives them to state Republicans. (Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed the bill but the state Senate overrode the veto last week and the state House is scheduled to vote on the override on Wednesday, at about the same time the BOE meets.)

“Somebody yesterday, they looked at me, and I’ll be honest with you, it was a reporter that looked at me and said, ‘I don’t believe at all that this could possibly happen. I don’t believe that somebody could steal this election. I don’t believe that Jefferson Griffin could challenge these voters and could wipe away these 60,000,’” she said. 

“We are watching Republicans in our state legislature strip power away from people that are going into office next year because they are Democrats. Our Attorney General is under the threat of not being able to charge or to challenge any single law for unconstitutionality that comes out of this General Assembly right now.”

She added: “Are you serious? Are you seriously thinking that they would not be this manipulative and this malicious with the people and the power that they hold right now in this state? So do I have fear? Absolutely.”

Democrats will continue to fight any moves in court, but it was important for North Carolinians to see what is going on, Clayton said. 

“What’s happening in North Carolina is sinister and it will have a chilling effect on our democracy and our country if they’re able to get away with what they’re trying to achieve,” she said.

“So I’m begging every single person in the state of North Carolina: pay attention. Wake up and make sure that you understand what’s happening before your eyes right now and check and make sure that you’re not one of the 60,000 that they’re not respecting in this election cycle.”

How to check if your vote is being protested and what to do about it

If you’re wondering if your vote is being challenged, you can find the full list of contested ballots on the Board of Election website. You just have to do a few rounds of clicking. First, go here, the repository for all challenge file pdfs.

They are arranged according to a set file name: county – challenger – reason. And the key word is “incomplete registration.

So if you are in Wake County, for example, look for the file that says “Wake-Griffin- Incomplete Registration.”

Open it and you’ll see all legal forms at the beginning. Scroll to the end and you’ll find the collection of names. Then do a “ctrl-F” and search for your name.

Each challenge will be investigated, either by the county board or state board, depending on the specifics, but election officials say that if you are on the list, you can reach out to Griffin or Riggs’ team at [email protected] and [email protected].