Democrat Allison Riggs leads Republican Jefferson Griffin by 625 votes. (Courtesy photos)
Trailing incumbent Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs by 625 votes, Republican Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin wants to have batches of votes discounted.
Griffin has challenged ballots of more than 60,000 voters, according to a NC Republican Party press release. He has filed protests in every county.
Jefferson has also requested a recount, which is ongoing.
It appears that a majority of the challenges are based on voters who may not have provided a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number on their voter registration applications. A federal court judge partially dismissed a case brought by the Republican National Committee and the state Republican Party this year based on the same premise. The lawyer representing Republicans maintained in court that those voters are not properly registered. As part of that lawsuit, Republicans wanted the state Board of Elections to make a plan to purge 225,000 voters before Election Day or require them to cast provisional ballots.
Voters who appear to have been convicted of felonies and voters who died before Election Day are on Griffin’s protest lists, though the campaign’s data analyst did not know whether county elections boards had removed those ballots on their own. People who are on parole, probation, or are under post-release supervision for felony convictions are barred from voting.
Griffin is also challenging overseas voters who voted using an online portal and checked a box saying they never lived in the United States. A U.S. citizen who has never lived in the country but who has a parent who last lived in North Carolina is eligible to vote here, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program. The Republican National Committee and the state Republican Party sued over this issue too, asking ballots from those voters be set aside. The state Court of Appeals rejected their attempt last month.
The state Board of Elections on Wednesday ordered county boards of election to research and hold hearings on whether votes were counted from people who died, people serving felony sentences, or people who were not registered.
The state Board will consider the protests over incomplete registrations, overseas voters, and military and overseas voters who sent ballots without photo ID or an exception form.
The elections board set deadlines for county reports and lawyers’ briefs.
Ashlee Adams, the Republican candidate in state Senate District 18, Rep. Frank Sossamon, the incumbent Republican in House District 32, and Stacie McGinn, the Republican candidate in Senate District 42 have also filed protests.
Adams was trailing Democrat Terence Everitt in the Senate district that includes Granville and the northern edge of Wake by 134 votes. Everitt is a member of the state House who switched to run for a seat in the Senate.
Sossamon trails Democrat Bryan Cohn by 233 votes in the House district that includes Granville and part of Vance.
McGinn is trailing Woodson Bradley in the Mecklenburg County Senate district.
Those legislative races have also gone to recounts.
Meanwhile over on Jones Street
As the state Board of Elections was considering these challenges, the North Carolina Senate was moving forward with a sweeping bill to transfer the authority of the elections board to the state auditor’s office. The administration and the appointment of its members would fall under GOP purview starting May 1, 2025.
Senate Bill 382 also shortens the time voters can request absentee ballots, provides less time to correct mistakes on those absentee ballots, and gives county boards of election less time to count them.
The staff at the State Board of Elections was not consulted on the changes and only received the proposed legislation Tuesday morning. The 131-page bill passed the House that evening with Senate approval coming Wednesday afternoon.