RALEIGH, N.C. — The State Board of Elections on Wednesday voted mostly along party lines to dismiss Republican Jefferson Griffin’s challenge of over 60,000 ballots cast in the North Carolina Supreme Court election.

Griffin, who trails his Democratic opponent, Allison Riggs, by over 700 votes, made a variety of legal arguments claiming that ineligible voters were allowed to participate in the election — potentially changing the outcome.

The board disagreed, rejecting all of Griffin’s protests.

“The idea that someone could have been registered to vote, came to vote and then has their vote discarded is anathema to the democratic system and simply cannot be tolerated,” Board Chair Alan Hirsch, a Democrat, said.

The board’s Republicans voted against dismissing some of the protests, saying they would’ve preferred to proceed to a further hearing to gather more evidence.

After the hearing, Riggs told reporters she was grateful that all lawful votes would be counted.

“These are eligible voters,” she said. “My job is now — and will continue to be, because the voters of North Carolina saw fit to keep me in my seat — is to defend the constitutional rights of North Carolinians and to do so with no regard for political ideology, with no regard for political goals or dreams or aspirations.”

The chair of the NC GOP, Jason Simmons, blasted the board’s ruling in a statement released after the vote.

“Unsurprisingly, the most partisan State Board of Elections in history has once again failed the people of North Carolina,” he said. “The board’s continued efforts to engineer political outcomes for Democrats is shameful. We will review the board’s decision and reserve the right to any future actions to protect the integrity of our elections.”

The board’s rulings are the latest development in a race that still does not have an official winner over a month after Election Day.

A statewide machine recount and a partial hand recount of the results both affirmed Riggs’ lead, but the board could not declare a winner until hearing Griffin’s protests. Democrats have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to invalidate the protests, arguing that they could disenfranchise valid voters.

Now, the protests could head to state court.

State law allows Griffin to appeal the board’s rejection to Wake County Superior Court. From there, the case could work its way all the way up to the Supreme Court itself.

The board also rejected election protests filed by several Republicans who lost legislative races.

That included Granville County Rep. Frank Sossamon, whose loss to Democrat Bryan Cohn was decisive in breaking the GOP’s veto-proof supermajority in the General Assembly.

Most of the board’s votes split 3-2 along party lines.

Griffin had requested that a Democratic member of the board, Siobhan Millen, recuse herself from the case because her husband is a partner at the law firm representing Riggs.

Hirsch said he concluded that Millen did not have a conflict and would be able to participate in the hearing. He noted in a memo that the law firm had an ethical screen shielding Millen’s husband from any matters relating to Riggs.

“Given these circumstances, it would be inappropriate for Member Millen to be removed from consideration of this matter,” Hirsch wrote.

State lawmakers approved a new law last month that would shift control of the State Board of Elections to the GOP by stripping incoming Democratic Gov. Josh Stein of his appointment power and transferring it to the newly elected state auditor, Republican Dave Boliek.

Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed that bill, but the House is set to vote on overriding his veto on Wednesday.

What did Griffin’s protests argue?

While some of Griffin’s protests dealing with factual allegations were considered at the local level, the majority of his protests dealt not with specific allegations of fraud — but rather with legal arguments about voter eligibility that have so far been rejected by state and federal courts.

The State Board of Elections took jurisdiction over all protests dealing with legal issues and heard arguments from attorneys for Riggs and Griffin at a hearing on Wednesday.

Attorneys for Griffin argued that the board misapplied state law and allowed ineligible voters to participate in the election.

“We filed these protests because we believe the winners of these elections should be determined by eligible voters and only eligible voters,” Griffin’s attorney, Craig Schauer, told the board.

Ray Bennett, Riggs’ lawyer, argued that Griffin’s protests sought to institute new voter requirements after the fact, throwing out legitimate votes in the process.

“The election protests here violate a bedrock principle so basic you learn it in elementary school: If you lose, you don’t try to change the rules so you can claim that you won,” he said.

The most common reason Griffin challenged voters was his allegation that the voter did not have a driver’s license number or Social Security number attached to their voter registration.

In his legal brief filed with the board, Griffin’s lawyer argued that requiring this information was a “decades-old feature of American election law that protects the integrity of our elections.”

The Republican National Committee also made this argument in a lawsuit filed this summer which sought to purge 225,000 voters from the rolls. A federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump rejected part of the RNC’s argument, though the case is still ongoing.

Stacy “Four” Eggers, a Republican on the board, called the issue a “self-inflicted wound,” noting that the board had been made aware that its registration form did not clearly indicate to voters that they were required to provide the information. A new form was created last year to make the requirement more clear, but the board did not attempt to collect the information from voters who already registered without providing it.

Democrats on the board said this was not a legitimate reason to throw out the votes, especially since all voters still had to show ID in this election.

“There’s nothing those individuals could have done — as far as they could tell, they were properly registered,” Hirsch said.

Bennett also noted that Griffin’s attorneys had not actually identified any voters on their lists who were ineligible to vote, based on current state law.

Strach, one of Griffin’s lawyers, conceded this point, but said it was because the board hadn’t provided sufficient data for their analysis.

Griffin also argued that the board should not count votes from adult children of North Carolina residents living abroad who have never resided in the state. A state law passed in 2011 explicitly permits those voters to participate in the state’s elections, but Griffin argued that that law violates the state constitution.

The RNC made the same argument earlier this year, but had its lawsuit rejected by a state court.

The final protest category before the board on Wednesday argued that votes from military and overseas voters who do not provide voter ID should not be counted. An administrative rule exempts these voters from the ID requirement, but Griffin argued that the rule violates state law.

The board’s Republicans joined the Democratic majority to unanimously reject this protest, finding that the rule was binding.

An N&O analysis of Griffin’s protests found that Black registered voters were twice as likely to have their votes challenged as white voters.

_____

©2024 The Charlotte Observer. Visit charlotteobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.