Democratic incumbent Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs and her Republican challenger, Judge Jefferson Griffin. (Courtesy photos)
If you’ve traveled through North Carolina lately, you may have spotted billboards from the capital to the coast featuring failed 2024 Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin.
The billboards, inspired by growing public backlash against Griffin’s efforts to reverse his election results by tossing the votes of 60,000 North Carolinians, point to an online hub (ccnc.me/wematter) hosted by Common Cause North Carolina where concerned voters can check if they’re on Griffin’s “discounted vote” list.
Hundreds of North Carolina voters spent their holiday break doing just that.
A family member found Dr. Dawn Baldwin Gibson’s name among pages of implicated Pamlico County voters.
“I thought I would look at the list and find friends and family to contact…and there I was,” Baldwin Gibson told me by phone.
Dr. Baldwin Gibson is just one of many surprised (and surprising) citizens ensnared in Griffin’s gambit to target tens of thousands of eligible voters, including fellow Republican politicians and even Griffin’s own donors. A pastor and long-time unaffiliated voter, who has supported both Republican and Democratic causes, Baldwin Gibson is a member of the North Carolina Judicial Branch’s Faith and Justice Alliance Steering Committee, a coalition of “legal practitioners and faith-based leaders” helping state courts better serve our needs.
Now, it’s Dr. Baldwin Gibson who finds herself in need of help.
She took to Facebook to express her frustration, garnering thousands of responses for a video she entitled, “Is this really happening in America?”
“This is something I’ve never seen before, never experienced before…our citizenship is being challenged… It came right to my front door,” Baldwin Gibson told her followers.
Unfortunately, Griffin’s challenge has now come right to the front door of the NC Supreme Court.
On Jan. 7, just a day after a federal judge punted Griffin’s case back to the state, the Republican-led majority on the Supreme Court halted the certification of the 2024 election to determine whether their GOP candidate deserves an unprecedented election “do-over.”
Amid this head-scratching move by the Court, led by Chief Justice Paul Newby, more unlikely voices have emerged to echo the concerns of impacted voters.
For starters, ProPublica reported that in 2024, the leader of the North Carolina’s chapter of the Election Integrity Network—a group which gained notoriety for among other things plotting to challenge any Tar Heel voters with “Hispanic-sounding” names — said he believed the type of case now pursued by Griffin amounted to “voter suppression.”
Just before the 2024 election, when the Republican National Committee attempted a similar lawsuit to remove 225,000 NC voters from the rolls, a Trump-appointed judge denied their case after challengers called the claim a “mass disenfranchisement.”
A New Year brought new bipartisan opposition to Griffin’s legal bid. This included former Congressmembers who called for a resolution favoring voters at the federal level.
And yet, the most surprising and important pushback has come from inside the North Carolina Supreme Court itself. Following the Court’s order on Jan. 7, blocking the victory by Griffin’s opponent and their Democratic colleague, Justice Allison Riggs, Republican Justices Trey Allen and Richard Dietz used the opportunity to voice their own concerns about Griffin’s efforts to overturn Riggs’ election.
Justice Allen wrote in the order, “If a critical mass of the public ever comes to believe that our state Supreme Court bases its decisions in politically-charged cases [less] on the law than on our politics, our justice system will not endure.”
In a rare dissent, Justice Dietz went further saying he didn’t believe Griffin’s request should even be considered, calling it “almost certainly meritless.”
It all begs bigger questions. Will others on the Supreme Court join this growing chorus and reject an argument even extreme election deniers won’t support and fellow Republicans think shouldn’t be considered? If the Court does gamble with our votes to save Griffin, does it open the door for them to invalidate more election results? If the Court calls for a new election, will North Carolinians vote for a Justice who would so easily silence their voices for their own best interests.
Or, as Dr. Baldwin Gibson put it, “Is this really happening in America?”