GOP Supreme Court candidate wants elections board to hurry up and vote on his protests
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Judge Jefferson Griffin and Justice Allison Riggs (Courtesy photos)
Republican Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin has asked his colleagues on the court to force the state Board of Elections to make a decision on his election protests in his candidacy for a state Supreme Court seat by Tuesday, Dec. 10.
Griffin’s court filing came a day after the state Board told the Griffin campaign it would meet Dec. 11 to hear his protests, according to Board spokesman Pat Gannon.
The state Board must meet publicly to decide the protest and must give the public 48 hours’ notice of the meeting under the state’s Open Meetings Law.
Griffin is trying to unseat incumbent Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs. An initial full count of ballots and a machine recount show Riggs head by 734 votes out of about 5.5 million cast.
Riggs declared victory after the machine recount.
A hand recount of 3% of votes is being conducted at Griffin’s request.
Griffin is also protesting ballots of more than 60,000 voters. Included in the protest are ballots cast by overseas voters and voters whose registration forms he claims were incomplete.
The Board of Elections was set to discuss Griffin’s protest on Nov. 26, but his last-minute motion to disqualify Democratic member Siobhan Millen from the discussion derailed that plan.
In his court filing, Griffin asks the Appeals Court to order the Board of Elections to decide on his protests by 5 pm on Tuesday. The Board’s delay undermines the public trust, his court petition says.
Most of the ballots Griffin is challenging were cast by voters whose registration forms he claims are incomplete because they lack a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number.
The Republican National Committee and the state Republican Party made the same claims this year in a lawsuit where they sought to purge 225,000 voters. A federal judge partially dismissed the case earlier this year, but part of it is still alive.
Republicans also sued to challenge overseas voters who have never lived in the state. The state Appeals Court rejected the GOP attempt to block those voters.
Griffin is also challenging overseas voters because they don’t show photo identification.
In a brief filed late Friday, counsel for Justice Riggs urged the State Board of Elections to deny all of Judge Griffin’s protests. Here’s an excerpt from that brief:
“Having failed to win over the voters, Judge Griffin now pleads his case here. He asks the Board to change the voting rules, decide that tens of thousands of voters failed to comply with those changed rules, and then throw out their votes for failure to anticipate the new rules. While that request is legally and constitutionally improper, it is wrong on an even more basic level—one familiar in every schoolyard in North Carolina. Whether playing a board game, competing in a sport, or running for public office, the runner-up cannot snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by asking for a redo under a different set of rules. The Board should deny the protests as an illegal attempt to change the election rules after the votes have been cast and counted.”
The State Board of Elections will meet again on Wednesday.
Raleigh, NC