Court Ruling May Flip Results Of State Supreme Court Election

In a 2-1 decision, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled that tens of thousands of votes cast in an election for the state Supreme Court must be recounted and verified.

Approximately 65,000 votes could be tossed in the 2024 race between Republican Jefferson Griffin and Democrat Allison Riggs.

The panel ruled the voters have 15 business days to provide proof of identity.

The disputed votes are believed to favor Riggs, who held a 734-vote lead after recounts.

#BREAKING: In the North Carolina Supreme Court race where the Democrat won by just ~700 votes, 65,000 VOTERS must now prove they were eligible to vote, or face removal from the count – ruling

Ballots in question lean heavily Democrat.

We could be in for a red race flip.

15… pic.twitter.com/EVMOaeFmmK

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) April 4, 2025

NBC News reports:

The court ruled that any voters who don’t respond will not have their votes counted in the race between Griffin and Democrat Allison Riggs, which is still caught in legal battling five months after Election Day.

The arduous task of verifying those voter identities will fall on the North Carolina State Board of Elections. And the decision sets up an appeal to North Carolina’s highest court, the state Supreme Court — the body that the winner of this election will join.

“The inclusion of even one unlawful ballot in a vote total dilutes the lawful votes and ‘effectively disenfranchises’ lawful voters,” the Republican majority on the three-person panel wrote in its opinion. “Post-election protests protect against this risk of vote dilution by enabling candidates and voters to rigorously investigate the election process, identify and challenge unlawful ballots, and ensure those ballots are not counted.”

The one Democratic judge involved in the state Court of Appeals’ decision said the majority’s ruling amounted to “changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes” and called the majority’s ruling an “an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the Constitution.”

Just in: North Carolina Court of Appeals has ruled in the North Carolina Supreme Court race that 65,000 voters must prove they were eligible to vote, or face removal from the count. The Democrat leads there only by 700 votes. They have 15 days to prove they are eligible to vote pic.twitter.com/pKhAcvEk8b

— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) April 4, 2025

North Carolina Court of Appeals orders 65,000 voters to prove eligibility in Supreme Court race as Republican Jefferson Griffin challenges 700-vote deficit. pic.twitter.com/O8hBSsszYR

— NewsWire (@NewsWire_US) April 4, 2025

Per CNN:

Griffin’s postelection protests challenged over 65,000 ballots in three different categories. Griffin currently serves on the Court of Appeals and had recused himself from deliberations within the court, where some of his colleagues ruled favoring him.

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The prevailing opinion declares that the board should have found that ballots from within each of three categories shouldn’t be counted because they failed to comply with state law or the state constitution. The decision also reverses the decision of a trial judge who in February upheld the board’s actions.

“Free elections under … the North Carolina Constitution include the right to an accurate counting of votes,” said the opinion backed by Judges John Tyson and Fred Gore, both registered Republicans. “Griffin has a legal right to inquire into this outcome through the statutorily-enacted and postelection procedures available to him.”

In two of those categories of challenged voters, the judges directed that the state board give voters in two of the categories 15 business days to provide their missing information or photo identification. If the information is provided in time, then those ballots would still count, the opinion reads.

Griffin’s attorneys have said previously that removing the challenged ballots would favor their client and likely make him the winner. The ballots challenged on the ID mandate, for example, largely came from Democratic-leaning counties. But it’s unclear how many voters would provide the information the judges say are necessary for the ballots to be counted.

In the third category — involving overseas voters who have never lived in the US — their ballots should not count, according to Tyson and Gore.

Lawyers for Riggs and the board have said the ballots were cast lawfully based on state laws and rules that have been applied to elections for years and can’t be altered retroactively. Riggs’ allies have held rallies across the state demanding Griffin concede, saying he was trying to overturn the results of a fair election.

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