Judge Griffin wants their votes tossed, but challenged voters say ‘All votes count’ | Opinion

Some of the votes that Judge Jefferson Griffin wants to erase turned into people on Friday.

Some of the living, breathing voters who cast those votes showed up at the Wake County Courthouse. They were there for the opening Superior Court hearing on Griffin’s effort to have more than 60,000 votes removed from the final count in his state Supreme Court race against Justice Allison Riggs. A race Riggs won.

Judge William Pittman took only a few hours after the hearing to find that the State Board of Elections had properly denied Griffin’s protest of the election result, but Griffin is likely to appeal the ruling to the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

Before the judge heard arguments that led to his succinct ruling, there were more voters present than could fit in the courtroom. So they gathered on the courthouse steps to listen to spontaneous speeches and engage in group chants of “All votes count” and ”This is what democracy looks like.”

The group included about 75 people, a little more than one person for every thousand votes challenged.

One of them was Susan Zhang, a 39-year-old data analyst from Durham.

A native of China, Zhang came to the U.S. at age 6 when her parents fled the oppression of communism. She is furious that Griffin challenged her vote, calling him a “crybaby sore loser.”

“What makes Jefferson Griffin more important than me as a voter, as an American citizen?” she said.

Zhang, an unaffiliated voter, added, “I worked really, really hard to become an American citizen. I paid my taxes and followed all the laws. To say this is unfair is an understatement.”

Griffin, a Republican Court of Appeals judge, has gone to court to have the votes disqualified because records show that the voters’ registrations lacked a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number, as required by law. He’s also challenging some absentee ballots and votes by people living abroad.

With those votes eliminated, Griffin thinks he will win the race that two recounts have already showed him losing by 734 votes out of more than 5 million cast.

Lily Levin, 23, of Raleigh, voted while she was living in Chile as part of the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. She said she included her driver’s license number and possibly also her passport number with her vote.

Levin, a recent Duke graduate, said Griffin’s challenge to so many voters fits with a broader Republican effort to suppress votes, reduce early voting and shape election outcomes through gerrymandering.

“They are trying to get people to not vote because they know the majority is not in their favor,” she said.

It’s bizarre that a judge is bringing a case that should be laughed out of court.

Some of the missing information is the result of clerical errors. And Griffin isn’t challenging all registrations that lack the numbers. His list focuses on younger voters and minority voters and votes cast in heavily Democratic counties. Finally, his whole contention of missing identifying information is moot because almost all voters presented a valid ID when they cast their vote.

But Griffin’s case is not about legality. It’s about political power. He pushed to have his case heard in state court in hopes that it will ultimately be decided by the state Supreme Court, where Republicans have a 5-2 majority.

In a ruling that suspended the certification of the state Supreme Court election pending the outcome of Griffin’s complaint, three Republican justices indicated that they think Griffin’s argument may have merit.

More than 60,000 voters would disagree. On Friday, some of them backed their challenged votes with their voices.

This story was originally published February 7, 2025 at 5:54 PM.