N&O’s Kyle Ingram wins award for coverage of attempt to invalidate NC votes
An award presented Friday honors News & Observer reporter Kyle Ingram’s coverage of an attempt to disqualify North Carolina voters’ ballots on a massive scale.
For months after Election Day in 2024, a state Supreme Court race remained undecided, awaiting the outcome of a legal fight between candidates Allison Riggs and Jefferson Griffin.
Griffin and Republicans sought — ultimately unsuccessfully — to overturn the election results that showed Democratic incumbent Riggs as the winner. To challenge more than 60,000 ballots, they deployed a number of legal claims, notably that voters’ ballots should be invalidated if their registration lacked a driver’s license number or Social Security number.
Kyle wrote about the near-daily developments in the legal fight while also digging into the claims involved, the potential impact on voters and the money fueling the fight. The North Carolina Open Government Coalition presented Kyle with a Sunshine Award for his coverage of the race and its aftermath, singling out three investigative stories:
- Black NC voters twice as likely to have ballots challenged in Griffin election protests
- Who are the 100,000 NC voters with incomplete registrations? What our analysis shows
- We know who funded Supreme Court legal fight. But a new law may make money secret
The coalition, which advocates for public access to government, announced this year’s awards at NC State University as part of the North Carolina News & Information Summit that it hosts annually with the news outlet NC Local.
The Sunshine Awards are meant to recognize people and organizations who improve government transparency in North Carolina. This year’s awards recognized journalists at local, national and student-run news outlets, as well as public officials and a longtime media and First Amendment lawyer, Hugh Stevens.
Kyle is The N&O’s democracy reporter, covering voting rights, election administration and more. In an election year like this one, he’s bringing you the information that you need to know to vote.
You can reach Kyle at kingram@newsobserver.com or on social media, where he is @kyle_ingram11 on X and @kyleingram.bsky.social on Bluesky.
This story was originally published March 27, 2026 at 12:58 PM.
