As President Trump started his second term by pardoning violent insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Republicans in North Carolina already had a monthslong effort underway to achieve, essentially, the same goal the insurrectionists had four years ago: to overturn the results of a free and fair election.
On Nov. 5, North Carolina voters re-elected Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat, to her seat on the Republican-controlled North Carolina Supreme Court. The contest was close, but clear.
The result of this race was in line with the results of several other statewide elections in North Carolina where voters rejected far-right extremism, including in the races for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state and superintendent of public instruction. North Carolinians also elected enough Democrats to break a heavily gerrymandered Republican supermajority in the state legislature.
Yet when Justice Riggs defeated her Republican opponent — Judge Jefferson Griffin — he refused to accept the choice of North Carolina’s electorate. Despite two recounts and the North Carolina State Board of Elections confirming Justice Riggs’s victory, Judge Griffin sued, insisting that the State Supreme Court block the certification of Justice Riggs’s re-election and invalidate more than 60,000 valid ballots, a move clearly aimed at installing him as the victor. More specifically, in his challenge, Judge Griffin alleges that in the state’s registration database, records for most of the challenged voters lack a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number. He also challenged the validity of a smaller number of votes cast by overseas citizens and military service members from several heavily Democratic counties.
But there is no suggestion that any of these 60,000-plus voters acted improperly, deliberately cast illegal ballots or failed to produce required identification when voting. And when the State Board of Elections reviewed his claim, it concluded, in a meticulous written decision, that Judge Griffin’s allegations lacked substance. The issue that is now before the courts is whether a court can simply cast aside tens of thousands of appropriately cast ballots after an election is over. This shouldn’t be a question: The United States Constitution and other federal laws protect against such ballots from being retroactively discarded.
Ordinarily, a request like this one would be a nonstarter. That a sitting judge filed this lawsuit in the first place is, frankly, disturbing. As an officer of the court who has sworn an oath, Judge Griffin has an obligation to protect the electoral process, not undermine it with a shameless attempt to disenfranchise voters. What’s even more distressing, though, is that the North Carolina Supreme Court’s Republican majority has allowed such a lawsuit to proceed and, in doing so, has stopped the certification of the election results.
This action is a departure from the way courts on the whole acted in 2020. That year, federal and state judges across the country — including those affiliated with the Republican Party, all the way up to the conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court — refused Mr. Trump’s demands to throw out legal ballots. They refuted baseless claims that the presidential race was stolen. None of the courts ultimately stopped any states from certifying election results by their required deadlines — not one.
What’s happening in North Carolina, by contrast, should concern all Americans. Any judge operating in an independent and fair manner would maximize the chance that all of North Carolinians’ ballots are counted and ensure that the electoral result reflects the decision of the state’s citizens. But so far, the North Carolina Supreme Court has done the opposite, opening the door to mass disqualifications of legitimate voters — after the fact — to try to install a losing candidate from the court majority’s political party.
As a nation, we have seen up close the lengths to which too many in the Republican Party are willing to go to circumvent our democratic process to illegitimately attain and hold on to power. We’ve seen states impose voting requirements designed to shrink the electorate. We’ve seen partisan and racial gerrymanders entrench extreme politicians in custom-made districts.
On Tuesday, a federal court ruled that Judge Griffin’s lawsuit can proceed in state court, with a hearing set for Friday in a state trial court — setting this case on a path to very likely making its way back to the North Carolina Supreme Court for a decision.
If North Carolina’s highest tribunal subverts the legitimate outcome of this election by changing the rules when the voting is over and throwing out votes simply because it can, we will cross yet another dangerous line as a society.
Extreme, anti-democracy politicians across the country will, without doubt, be further emboldened to cherry-pick votes to tilt races in their favor, regardless of the actual results. In more jurisdictions, election outcomes will very likely be predetermined long before a single ballot has been cast or counted. It is, in essence, politicians choosing the voters instead of voters choosing their political leaders. It is a result that would set a dangerous precedent and further weaken our democracy.
This should be an easy case. The courts should protect the thousands of people Judge Griffin has sought to disenfranchise, affirm that Justice Riggs should rightfully remain in office and end this deep betrayal of voters who put their faith in our democratic process.
We all have an obligation to defend the founding principles of our nation, and the courts have a sacred responsibility to uphold voting rights. North Carolinians — all Americans — should be watching closely to ensure justice is done here. Four years after America survived a brazen attempt to overturn an election, we must again stand firm, protect every ballot and demand that the will of the people prevails.
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