GOP Judge Jefferson Griffin wants overseas ballots from Democratic counties discarded first

Republican state Supreme Court candidate continues to pursue litigation in hopes of overturning the results of the November election he lost to incumbent Justice Allison Riggs. (File photos)

In Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin’s petition to have the state Supreme Court throw out votes, he asks that they look first to a collection of ballots cast in four overwhelmingly Democratic counties. 

Griffin, an Appeals Court judge, is trying to unseat incumbent Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs. He trails by 734 votes. As Griffin pursues a victory, he is asking the state Supreme Court to order more than 60,000 ballots be thrown out. 

The overwhelming number of ballots challenged are those he said were cast by people he claims filed incomplete voter registration applications. 

Two other categories focus on overseas and military voters, including those who did not submit a photo ID with their ballots and overseas voters who never lived in the state but whose parents lived here. 

In a court brief earlier this month, Griffin’s lawyers suggested the justices consider his case in phases, starting first with overseas ballots without photo ID. These overseas voters are members of the military and their families and U.S. citizens living abroad. 

If Griffin wins after the overseas votes without ID are discarded, his brief suggests, the court would not have to consider the other categories.

Griffin is challenging only overseas and military voters from Durham, Guilford, Forsyth, and Buncombe counties on the grounds of lack of ID, according to Chris Cooper, a Western Carolina University political scientist. All are heavily Democratic counties that Riggs won handily. 

Riggs won 65.5% of the votes in those four counties, 18 percentage points higher than her vote share in the other 96 counties, according to Cooper’s analysis.

In this category of challenged voter, registered Democrats and unaffiliated voters were much more likely to be challenged than registered Republicans. 

A state Board of Elections rule says that overseas voters are not required to submit photo ID with their ballots. When the board considered Griffin’s protests last year, this was the category members voted unanimously to dismiss. 

In a brief filed Tuesday, Riggs’ lawyers said the legislature in 2011 adopted the overseas and military voter law modeled after a federal law. Nothing in that law requires military and overseas civilian voters to present ID. A separate federal law exempts those voters from ID requirements, the brief said. 

The Trump Administration told Virigina it would violate federal law if it imposed an ID requirement on overseas and military voters, the brief said. 

Griffin’s election case is continuing on two tracks.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is considering whether the case should even be in state court. It will hear oral arguments on Monday January 27 on whether the case should have remained in federal court, where the state Board of Elections had transferred it, or if a federal District Court judge was right to send it back to state court.

Proceedings in the state Supreme Court — which ordered the Board of Elections not to certify the results of the election earlier this month — remain on hold.

The Board of Elections maintains the federal Help America Vote Act and the National Voter Registration Act are key in the case.