Judge denies GOP candidate’s request to block NC Supreme Court election certification
The State Board of Elections voted to dismiss a slate of pending election protests filed by Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin in a 3-to-2 decision.
Meanwhile, a federal judge declined to take immediate action requested by Griffin in his case challenging 60,000 ballots cast in his race.
During a board of elections hearing on Friday, members reviewed Griffin’s pending challenges to about 817 votes, of which approximately 292 ballots had been identified by election officials as potentially in question. All Democratic members voted to dismiss the challenges, while both Republican members opposed dismissal.
Justice Allison Riggs, a Democratic incumbent appointed to the state Supreme Court, leads Griffin by 734 votes in the race, which has not yet been certified.
The Democratic members said they believed the protests wouldn’t change the outcome of the election and didn’t need to be taken further under the rules. On the other hand, GOP members said it was too early to say for sure whether the protests might affect the results, especially with a court case still in progress.
Griffin has been challenging the results of the November election, which showed he lost after the initial count and two reviews.
The state Board of Elections denied Griffin’s challenge of 60,000 ballots he said should not have been counted, but Griffin pressed on, requesting the North Carolina Supreme Court take up his case.
The Board of Elections asked the case be moved to federal court. Griffin requested that the federal court enter a temporary restraining order prohibiting the board from certifying Riggs as the winner.
On Friday, U.S. Chief District Judge Richard Myers denied that temporary restraining order, saying in his order that the defendant “failed to make a clear showing that he will suffer immediate injury.”
That’s because the state board has said that the election won’t be certified until at least Jan. 3, Myers wrote.
Myers, a Donald Trump appointee, previously partly dismissed a controversial Republican lawsuit seeking to purge 225,000 North Carolina voters from the rolls earlier this year, The News & Observer previously reported. The lawsuit made some similar arguments to the ones later advanced by Griffin for why voters should not be on the rolls.
He ruled that the state Republican Party and the Republican National Committee lacked standing to sue under the federal voter registration law.
Riggs filed paperwork on Thursday to intervene in the federal case, which lists Griffin as the petitioner and the state’s board of elections as the defendant.
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This story was originally published December 20, 2024 at 5:28 PM.
