Jefferson Griffin’s effort to steal a seat on the NC Supreme Court now hinges on throwing out military votes

The North Carolina Supreme Court has opened the door wide enough for Griffin to sneak in and overturn his election defeat. But at a rally on Monday, Justice Allison Riggs vowed to fight to keep the seat she won. 

Five months ago, Jefferson Griffin lost his state supreme court race to Justice Allison Riggs, but a flurry of developments over the last few days have increased the chances that Griffin will steal a seat on that court by throwing out the votes of active duty military members serving overseas.

The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday rejected Griffin’s effort to throw out 60,000 votes based on incomplete voter registrations, but it gave him enough room to be declared the winner anyway by targeting a smaller group of overseas voters, most of whom are military personnel and their families.

The state’s highest court, the majority of which is comprised of Griffin’s friends and former Republican running mates, ordered the North Carolina State Board of Elections (BOE) to notify the voters that if they did not provide a copy of their Voter ID within 30 days, their votes would not count in this race. The court’s ruling reversed part of an appeals court decision on the 60,000 voters with missing registration info, and increased the number of days given to overseas voters to provide their IDs.

But this ask, veterans and voting rights groups say, is especially onerous for active duty military members who may be deployed in dangerous corners of the world where it will be difficult to even receive such a notification, much less act on it in time.

Riggs immediately appealed the NC Supreme Court ruling to federal court, seeking an emergency injunction blocking the state’s highest court from carrying out the order. But on Saturday, a federal judge declined to provide the injunction, allowing the process to begin while he considers the larger federal issues. He prevented the Board of Elections from certifying any result, but essentially cleared the path for the appeals court to issue directions for how the board is to begin notifying voters. 

It is unclear the exact number of voters who will ultimately be at risk if they don’t respond, because Griffin targeted these voters in separate legal filings, some of which came after a court-ordered filing deadline. 

He challenged overseas voters only in several Democratic-leaning counties, meaning the issue is not about ALL voters in the state who voted this way, only the ones who likely voted for Riggs. Most Griffin voters who voted by overseas ballot are safe. 

RELATED: Four of the Republican judges in the Jefferson Griffin case were his de facto running mates in a previous election 

If the ruling ultimately applies only to the limited filing, which includes just Guilford County and targets 1,409 voters, there may not be enough votes thrown out for Griffin to overcome his 734-vote margin of defeat. If it applies to all the overseas voters he challenged, however, it will  cover more than 5,000 voters, giving him plenty of room to overturn the result. 

Whatever the number becomes, most of the voters in danger of having their votes thrown out will be active duty military members and their families. And all of the voters, both sides agree, followed the voting instructions given to them by state election officials.

‘I will not let one single voter slip through the cracks.’

To change the rules after an election so that a loser can win, Riggs said at a rally in Raleigh on Monday, is an affront to all the ideals North Carolina’s service members have fought for, bled for, and died to protect. 

“Military voters and other overseas voters are at risk of having their voices silenced and their votes thrown out,” Riggs said. “Those who raise their hand and get first in line to serve our country should not now be first in line to have their votes tossed.”

Though Riggs said she was “gratified” that the court had rejected Griffin’s challenges against the 60,000+ voters with registration issues — a list that included her parents — the narrowed focus on overseas voters did not make it any less a threat to those ideals.

“Hear me when I say this: It is no more acceptable to only disenfranchise a few thousand people instead of 65,000,” she said. 

“Our Constitution demands equal protection and equal treatment under the law,” Riggs added, “and I promise you I will not let one single voter slip through the cracks.”

The stakes, she said, were bigger than 734 votes in one state election.

“ If we lose here, people who don’t love the precious right to vote … will use this as a playbook over and over again, all across this country, to try to overturn elections they don’t like.”

For overseas military members, ‘It’s hard enough to vote.’

In five months of protests against Griffin’s efforts, veterans have been among the loudest voices. 

The voting process is already difficult for military members stationed overseas, veterans say, where they have no control over their whereabouts and where access to timely mail delivery can be sparse. 

Alex Rich, an Air Force veteran who served in Afghanistan, often voted by absentee ballot when he was deployed, he said at the Monday rally. 

He worried about a lot of things when fighting overseas, he said, but he never had to worry about his vote. Until now.

@cardinalandpine

More than four months after Jefferson Griffin lost his race for the state Supreme Court, a three-judge panel of the state appeals court on Friday will hear why he wants to throw out more than 65,000 valid votes from that election so that he can win instead. Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs beat Griffin by 734 votes, a margin confirmed by two recounts. Ahead of the court hearing, veterans held a press conference at the state capitol building in Raleigh to urge him to stop. The bulk of the ballots Griffin wants to discard are from voters who have been voting in North Carolina for years without issue, but who have some information missing from the state registration database. Griffin says those votes should not have been counted, though a paperwork issue on a database does not mean there is any actual issue with a registration. Griffin is also targeting overseas military voters in Democratic counties who voted by mail. He says they should have included a copy of their Voter ID even though the North Carolina Board of Elections expressly told them they did not need to. Griffin is NOT targeting the overseas military voters from Republican counties who voted this way. Cardinal & Pine’s Michael McEloy was there.

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“ I remember what it’s like to be deployed far from home,” Rich said. “I remember what it’s like to have to worry about the safety of the men and women around me and the success of the mission. What I don’t remember is having to worry about a ballot that I cast being invalidated after I cast it. I don’t remember having to worry about democracy while I was down range fighting for this country.”

These voters followed orders, Rich said, just like they were trained to do.

“There are thousands of men and women overseas who voted in 2024, who received their ballots, obeyed the instructions on the ballots, and submitted their ballots on time.”

He added: “It’s hard enough to vote when you’re in the military, when you don’t have control over where you might be at any given moment.”

NC Sen. Val Applewhite, a Democrat who represents Fayetteville and Fort Bragg, also knows how hard it is for deployed North Carolinians to vote. She served 20 years in the Air Force and spent time in Germany and South Korea. 

Most people, she said, do not understand.

“It’s ridiculous,” she said. “When I heard of the decision, I started thinking, ‘how can they do this in 30 days?’

There is not a lot of down time in the military, she said, where soldiers, airmen, or Marines can just stroll down to the post office on a casual errand. 

“A lot of people don’t know what a day is like for a military person. I can tell you that I’ve worked 18-hour days. I show up on shift at six o’clock in the morning, and if I’m lucky, I’m off at six or seven or eight o’clock at night,” she said. 

“I’m not even there for you to reach me.”

 She added: “What if someone has already gotten orders? What if they’ve already … had a permanent change of station and they’re no longer even assigned there? They’re in another country, or perhaps their stateside and nothing has caught up with them?”

This attack on voters, she said, seemed aimed directly at military members.

“And what I feel like, it was intentional to find the group of people that could least defend themselves or respond to this request. You’re overseas, you’re working hard. It’s not play time overseas for our military personnel, they’re not sitting around thinking, ‘oh, oh, I wonder what the race in North Carolina for Supreme Court is doing.’”

Griffin, a captain in the National Guard, has also voted absentee ballot while overseas in previous elections, and since his votes came before voter ID was required for in-person voting, he didn’t have to show a copy of his ID either.

Meaning, Griffin has voted in the exact same way as these military voters whose votes he is trying to discredit. Griffin should know how hard it is already for military members to vote, Rich said.

“Griffin’s attack on the members of the military and their families is disgraceful. It’s an attack on folks who have volunteered to risk their lives to protect our rights,” he said.

What can voters do now?

The short answer is, no one knows exactly. The NC Board of Elections says it will give detailed guidance to all affected voters once the appeals court issues its detailed guidance to election officials. The how of it all is going to be pretty important, but election officials and voting rights groups are hesitant to provide detailed instructions now in case they change in the coming days. 

No one wants to give these voters partial steps that may be misunderstood as the only steps they need to take. So while the clock will move fast once it starts to tick, at this moment the guidance is stand by, but be prepared to move quickly.

“As soon as possible, the State Board of Elections will provide detailed instructions to the affected counties and voters on how to comply with the decision,” the board says on its website. 

Errors in ‘never residents’ list highlights the risk to valid votes

Among the thousands of voters whose ballots are in danger of being thrown out are 260 voters who Griffin has accused of being “never residents.” Typically this group contains adult children of North Carolinians who live abroad, even if those children have never lived in the state. 

State law is clear that these voters can vote, but the NC appeals court and state supreme court ruled that the law should not apply to them, and each court ordered that these 260 votes be removed from the count.

But over the weekend, Bryan Anderson, a freelance journalist who has covered the case extensively, reported that at least 16 and as many as 27 of these voters did indeed have residential histories in North Carolina.

There is currently no path for these voters to prove their validity.