The state board of elections, a federal judge, and several elections experts have all rejected Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to throw out 60,000 votes from November’s state supreme court election and reverse the results in his favor. Yet the majority-Republican court—the same one Griffin is trying to join—recently blocked the certification of sitting justice Allison Riggs’ victory against him, meaning she still hasn’t been declared the official winner.
Riggs, a Democrat, received 734 more votes than Griffin, a Republican. Griffin is conveniently challenging only early votes and mail-in votes, which tend to lean Democratic, but not ballots cast on election day.
As it happens, I am one of the 60,000 eligible voters whose ballots Griffin is trying to discard, on the grounds that we don’t have a social security number or driver’s license on file with the state board of elections. Never mind that according to the state board of elections, there are “numerous benign reasons” those numbers might not be in the state database, none of which point to voter fraud. (You can check the list here to see if you’re on it, too, or use this handy website.)
Case in point: after I found out I was on Griffin’s list, I called the Durham County Board of Elections to confirm that my voter registration was complete and I’d voted legally. An elections worker named Debra looked me up in her database and reassured me there was nothing wrong with my registration. The system has trouble with compound names, she told me, and that’s likely the reason it couldn’t verify my social security number.
“You are a duly registered voter here in Durham County,” Debra explained. “There’s nothing that you need to do to fix your registration.”
Of course, not everyone on the list has a double-barreled last name like me. Some of them may have recently changed their names, voted legally overseas where they’re not required to show photo ID, registered long ago under different rules, or simply fallen victim to a clerical error.
Griffin and his supporters have not been able to prove one instance of voter fraud amongst the thousands of votes they are challenging.
The state supreme court’s decision last week to temporarily block the election certification and consider Griffin’s ballot challenges fell mostly along partisan lines. Riggs recused herself from the 4-2 decision. Democratic Justice Anita Earls and Republican Justice Richard Dietz dissented.
“Permitting post-election litigation that seeks to rewrite our state’s election rules—and, as a result, remove the right to vote in an election from people who already lawfully voted under the existing rules—invites incredible mischief,” Dietz wrote in his dissent.
While the state supreme court (and possibly a federal court) work out what to do about Griffin’s far-fetched scheme to overturn an election, many Democrats and voting rights advocates are pushing back.
On Tuesday, a crowd of protesters gathered outside the state supreme court building in downtown Raleigh to read all 60,000 names on Griffin’s list aloud. It took nearly twelve hours.
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Chloe Courtney Bohl is a corps member for Report for America. Reach her at chloe@indyweek.com. Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.