The NC Democratic Party sues to prevent the state elections board from throwing out votes

The North Carolina Democratic Party filed a federal lawsuit Friday to stop the State Board of Elections from erasing votes as Republican candidates want.  

Democrats said in the lawsuit that it is unconstitutional and against federal law for the state Board of Elections to toss bundles of votes cast by categories of voters. 

Republican Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin is trailing incumbent Democratic Supreme Court Justice in the Supreme Court race by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast. The margin remained at 734 after a first recount. 

Griffin is protesting more than 60,000 ballots, including ballots cast by people who his campaign says did not include a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number on their voter registration forms; overseas voters who have never lived in North Carolina but whose parents were eligible voters in the state before they moved; and ballots from overseas and military voters who did not include photo ID.  

Three Republican legislative candidates are protesting ballots based on the same arguments. 

The State Board of Elections has not made a decision on the protests. The board was planning to consider Griffin’s protest on Wednesday, board spokesman Pat Gannon said in an email Friday. 

Griffin on Friday asked the state Court of Appeals to order the board to make a decision by 5 p.m. Tuesday. 

Democrats are asking the federal court to declare that a mass dumping of votes is unconstitutional and against federal law.

“By endeavoring to throw away the already-cast votes of large swaths of voters based on generic legal challenges, the Protests, in essence, call for retroactive post-election voter-roll maintenance,” the lawsuit said. Doing so would be a violation of the National Voter Registration Act, the lawsuit said. 

Griffin’s claims about invalid voter registration and overseas voters who haven’t lived in North Carolina have already been heard and dismissed by state or federal courts.

A federal court judge partially dismissed a Republican lawsuit over the voter registration forms issue when the GOP sought to purge 225,000 voters or require them to cast provisional ballots. 

State courts rejected the GOP’s attempt to block overseas voters who haven’t lived in the state.

The state Republican Party sent voters whose ballots are under protest postcards with a QR code directing them to the protest filings.  

The Democrats’ lawsuit said those notices were insufficient and did not give voters a chance to respond to the challenges.  

“They do not inform voters which candidate has filed a protest, which of the hundreds of protests filed by various candidates affects the recipient, or even which race is at issue. Nor do the postcards disclose that the recipient has been named in a protest; they merely state that “your vote may be affected by one or more protests filed in relation to the 2024 General Election,” the lawsuit said. 

Some of the postcards were addressed to the voter “or current resident.”