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north carolina
'Bloodless Coup': NC Supreme Court Partially Upholds GOP Vote-Tossing Effort
"It is no small thing to overturn the results of an election in a democracy by throwing out ballots that were legally cast consistent with all election laws in effect on the day of the election," one dissenting justice said.
Apr 12, 2025
In what North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein called a "dark day" for the state, the North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday delivered a partial victory to Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin, who is challenging some 65,000 votes in his bid to overturn the narrow win of his Democratic opponent and incumbent state Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs.
The Supreme Court, ruling 4-2, partially overturned an appeals court decision earlier this month that gave all the challenged voters 15 days to affirm their identities. Instead, the state's highest court ruled that around 60,000 ballots with registration inconsistencies would not be challenged, but approximately 5,000 overseas or military voters would have to verify their identities within 30 days. Riggs said she would challenge the ruling in federal court, and asked the court to temporarily block the order.
"I'm the proud daughter of a 30-year military veteran who was deployed overseas, and it is unacceptable that the court is choosing to selectively disenfranchise North Carolinians serving our country, here and overseas," Riggs said in a statement. "While I'm gratified to see the Court of Appeals reversed on the erroneous decision to potentially disenfranchise the more than 60,000 North Carolinians whose registration my opponent has recklessly challenged, I will not waiver in my fight to protect the fundamental freedoms for which our military service members and their families have sacrificed so much."
"This shocking decision abandons the judiciary's most basic role, to protect the rights of the people, and sanctions an outright attempt to steal an election."
Riggs won the November contest to remain on the state Supreme Court by 734 votes, but Griffin has challenged several thousand votes, predominantly on two grounds: Around 60,000 of the challenged votes are from in-state voters whose driver's license or social security numbers were missing from a state database of registered voters, while another approximately 2,000 to 7,000 are overseas or military voters who did not show ID when voting absentee. A significant number of the votes he challenged belonged to people living in Democratic-leaning counties.
The state Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the 60,000 in-state voters should not be challenged because their rights should not be denied due to “mistakes made by negligent election officials in registering citizens who are otherwise eligible to vote," as The New York Times reported.
However, the court allowed the challenge to the overseas votes to stand, even though overseas voters have never before been required to show ID since a state-voter ID law went into effect.
"Republicans are surgically targeting military voters from six counties and forcing them to re-prove themselves or be disenfranchised," Anderson Clayton, the chairwoman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, said in a statement reported by the Times.
Finally, the court also allowed the votes of nearly 300 voters who had never lived in North Carolina—often the children of North Carolina residents who turned 18 while living abroad—to be tossed.
If the state Supreme Court's ruling stands and the military and overseas votes are rejected, Griffin has said he expects it will be enough to tip the election in his favor, WRAL Newsreported.
The two dissenting justices vehemently condemned the majority decision.
"It is no small thing to overturn the results of an election in a democracy by throwing out ballots that were legally cast consistent with all election laws in effect on the day of the election," Democratic Justice Anita Earls wrote. "Some would call it stealing the election, others might call it a bloodless coup, but by whatever name, no amount of smoke and mirrors makes it legitimate."
Justice Richard Dietz, a Republican, broke with his party and agreed that the court should not alter election laws after the fact. He also criticized his colleagues for not hearing arguments before making their decision.
"By every measure, this is the most impactful election-related court decision our state has seen in decades," Dietz wrote. "It cries out for our full review and for a decisive rejection of this sort of post hoc judicial tampering in election results."
State and national Democratic Party leaders also spoke out against the court's decision.
"Today is a dark day for our courts and our state," North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein wrote on social media. "The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that certain active duty military voters serving our nation must jump through hoops that other voters don't. All voters have a constitutional right to be treated equally under the law—it is foundational to our democracy. It's unconscionable, and this decision cannot stand."
Former Attorney General Eric Holder called the ruling "both a disgrace and legacy defining for those who put their names behind it."
"This shocking decision abandons the judiciary's most basic role, to protect the rights of the people, and sanctions an outright attempt to steal an election," he said in a statement. "The North Carolina Supreme Court's Republican majority has, for naked partisan reasons, cherrypicked whose votes count and whose do not. It is the height of political arrogance to tell military members who serve and sacrifice for our country, and other voters, that their votes and those of their family members are questionable."
Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin said: "Jefferson Griffin doesn't get to pick and choose whose votes count in an election—no politician does. The men and women serving in our military will not allow their voices to be silenced by a desperate loser like Griffin."
"The nation is watching North Carolina," Martin continued. "Meanwhile, the DNC and Democrats across this country stand ready to marshal resources and manpower to ensure every vote cast in this election is counted. The people's voices will be heard, and Justice Allison Riggs will take her rightful place on the North Carolina Supreme Court."
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How Will GOP Fight Back Against Political Fury Unleashed by Trump?
Two words: voter suppression. The Republican Party's recent actions make it clear that they will make it harder for regular folks to cast a ballot, by any means necessary.
Apr 12, 2025
It was the great Kris Kristofferson, whom we just lost last fall, who wrote that “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Is that what Trump meant by his “Liberation Day” of tariffs last week, which liberated America’s 401K investors of billions of dollars? At least millions of citizens felt the freedom to take to the streets over theweekend with their grievances, which should give all of us hope.
In an America that feels on edge right now, few things in the nation’s capital are more precarious than the GOP’s fragile hold on power in the U.S. House. The Republicans’ current 220-213 majority is one of the smallest in modern times. And with crucial votes just ahead on issues like President Donald Trump’s proposed tax cuts that favor billionaires and corporations, every vote counts.
Well, unless you’re one of 800,000 Texans who live in Houston or its adjacent Harris County suburbs.
Voters who live in the Lone Star State’s 18th Congressional District, which is nearly 76% Black and Latino, have received a series of gut punches, beginning last year when longtime incumbent and civil rights icon Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee died in office. The district then went strongly for another well-known local, Houston’s 70-year-old former mayor Sylvester Turner, giving him nearly 70% of the fall vote, even after his disclosure he was suffering from a rare form of bone cancer.
Sadly, Turner’s career as a U.S. congressman lasted less than 10 weeks. In late winter, the Houstonian fell ill and died on March 5. The intervening weeks — a momentous time back on Capitol Hill, including a budget vote carried by Republicans by a narrow margin — saw a large crowd come together for Turner’s funeral and candidates stepping forward to replace him.
What was missing for more than a month was any effort by Texas’ right-wing GOP Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special election to fill the vacant seat. Last week, as residents in the 18th grumbled and at least one Democratic hopeful — along with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — threatened to sue, Abbott finally spoke...
...not to call the election, but to say he was holding things up because of his ongoing complaints about how one of the few Democratic counties in a mostly red state conducts its elections. It is true that Harris County voters have experienced problems like long lines — often because of a lack of polling places and other restrictions imposed by the GOP-led statehouse. Meanwhile, Abbott cynically worked with state lawmakers to enact legislation that ousted one Democratic elections chief.
But Turner’s untimely death has given Abbott a MAGA two-fer: a chance to keep a safe Democratic seat vacant for as long as he can get away with it, and to stroke the Big Lie that any election that Republicans lose must involve voter fraud.
“Harris County is a repeat failure as it concerns operating elections,” Abbott insisted in a local interview. “Had I called that very quickly, it could have led to a failure in that election, just like Harris County has failed in other elections. They need to have adequate time to operate a fair and accurate election, not a crazy election like what they’ve conducted in the past.”
Monday night, as the impasse started getting more attention, Abbott did decide to declare a special election — not in June, when a statewide runoff is already scheduled, but during the Nov. 4 general election. That means citizens in and around Houston will go eight full months without a representative on Capitol Hill. It’s outrageous.
Abbott’s filibuster of giving Harris County a free, fair and prompt congressional election may offer an answer to the hottest burning question as spring 2025 dawns across the nation: How on earth do Republicans, who seem to be fueling a voter rebellion with Trump’s insane tariff scheme, consumer prices that are rising despite a campaign promise to bring them down, and the president’s popularity plunging, expect to win the 2026 midterms, let alone keep the White House in 2028?
The governor of America’s second-largest state just said the quiet part out loud: voter suppression.
If you spend too much time on social media, as I do, you frequently see liberals commenting on the next elections, only to add, “assuming we have an election.” It feels like extreme internet paranoia and in one sense it arguably is, because it’s impossible to imagine there won’t be balloting in 19 months.
Or, at least, something that resembles an election.
Although there may be few opportunities to as aggressively put a thumb on the scale of election fairness as Abbott is currently getting away with, it’s also becoming clear that Republicans — who’ve embraced anti-democratic tactics from closing polling places on college campuses to advocating for strict voter ID laws — are taking their war on voting to the next level.
Look no farther than North Carolina, where the Democratic candidate for the state’s Supreme Court, incumbent Associate Justice Allison Riggs, should have been sworn in for a full term months ago, after the 2024 results showed she’d defeated Republican Jefferson Griffin by a scant 734 votes.
The moral of the story should have been that every vote counts, but instead it has been that Republicans can’t accept defeat in a democratic election. After losing a recount, Team Griffin went into state court asking that a whopping 60,000 ballots get tossed out because of a complicated technicality in the way these voters had initially registered, even though they had presented valid IDs to vote as required by law.
A federal court had ruled against this challenge before the election, and the proposed massive disenfranchisement was rightfully called “ridiculous” by Charlotte Observer columnist Paige Masten, who added: “But it seems to be the Republican playbook these days: If at first you don’t succeed, just try to throw the votes out.”
The challenge has dragged out deep into 2025, until last week when Republican judges on the intermediate Court of Appeals powered a 2-1 ruling that stunned the Tarheel State by siding with Griffin’s argument, although most of the potentially disenfranchised voters were given three weeks to prove their identity and make their votes count. Still, the ruling — which Riggs is appealing to a Supreme Court where her colleagues are mostly Republican — could cancel out enough Democratic votes to change the outcome. It’s a grim reminder of what was expected from Team Trump if he’d lost last November, and a warning of what’s ahead.
These miscarriages of democracy in Texas and North Carolina come at the same time that Trump has signed an executive order — arguably not worth the piece of paper he scribbled his name across — with the goal of suppressing future votes.
The sweeping diktat signed by the president late last month demands that would-be voters produce proof of citizenship, seeks greater cooperation between the federal government and states on finding and removing ineligible voters, and also to leverage federal dollars to prevent mail-in ballots received after Election Day from being counted. The order has been panned by legal scholars, who note that such rules are typically set at the state level, and is already the subject of a lawsuit by 19 states.
Still, Trump and the GOP have laid down a marker for the 2026 election, and beyond. The party’s recent actions make it clear that they will make it harder for regular folks to cast a ballot, by any means necessary, including a new wave of voter ID laws, constant legal challenges, and maybe cancelling elections where they can. And any efforts to fight back, by Democrats or other aggrieved citizens, will trigger more Big Lies about election fraud.
The hole in the Republican strategy is that as Trump continues to set America on fire with his unhinged presidency, even extreme suppression can’t stop a tsunami at the ballot box.
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Dem to Appeal 'Deeply Misinformed Decision' Threatening Over 60,000 Voters in North Carolina
"The North Carolina Republican Party is one step closer to stealing an election in broad daylight," said one state Democrat.
Apr 04, 2025
Allison Riggs, a Democratic associate justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court, vowed to continue a legal battle over her narrow November victory after a state appeals panel on Friday took a major step toward invalidating more than 60,000 votes.
Riggs' GOP challenger, Judge Jefferson Griffin, lost by 734 votes—but rather than conceding, he has sought to have select ballots thrown out. In Friday's 2-1 decision, Republican Judges Fred Gore and John Tyson gave the targeted citizens 15 days to provide documentation to election workers confirming their eligibility to vote. If they don't do so, their votes could be discarded.
"We will be promptly appealing this deeply misinformed decision that threatens to disenfranchise more than 65,000 lawful voters and sets a dangerous precedent, allowing disappointed politicians to thwart the will of the people," Riggs said in a statement.
"North Carolinians elected me to keep my seat, and I swore an oath to the Constitution and the rule of law—so I will continue to stand up for the rights of voters in this state and stand in the way of those who would take power from the people," she added.
Since Riggs has recused herself from the case, only six of the North Carolina Supreme Court's justices will hear her appeal, "raising the possibility of a 3-3 deadlock," The News & Observerreported Friday.
As the Raleigh newspaper detailed:
If that were to happen, the most recent ruling of a lower court prevails, which means Friday's decision from the Court of Appeals could stand.
Riggs has said that if she loses at the state court level, she intends to return the case to federal court.
Republicans already hold a 5 to 2 majority on the state Supreme Court. If Griffin ultimately wins his case and replaces Riggs, that majority will grow to 6 to 1, further complicating Democrats' hopes to retake control of the court in coming elections.
Although the court fight is far from over, Griffin spokesperson Paul Shumaker and North Carolina GOP Chair Jason Simmons cheered Friday's decision, from which Democratic Judge Toby Hampson dissented.
Hampson's dissent begins by pointing out that Griffin "has yet to identify a single voter—among the tens of thousands petitioner challenges in this appeal—who was, in fact, ineligible to vote in the 2024 general election under the statutes, rules, and regulations in place in November 2024 governing that election."
"Changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes in an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the Constitution," Hampson argued.
Democratic leaders in North Carolina and beyond also blasted the majority's decision. State Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton said that "Judge Tyson and Gore put party affiliation above the rights of North Carolina voters" when they "legitimized Jefferson Griffin's unconstitutional challenge" to tens of thousands of legally cast votes.
Reminder: From my legal and partisan sources, this ultimately gets decided based on how fed courts address military and overseas voters who didn't provide photo ID (and were expressly advised before election that they didn't need to). Why it matters: andersonalerts.substack.com/p/nc-supreme...
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— Bryan Anderson (@bryanranderson.bsky.social) April 4, 2025 at 2:23 PM
North Carolina House of Representatives Minority Leader Robert Reives (D-54) declared: "We cannot mince words at this point: The North Carolina Republican Party is one step closer to stealing an election in broad daylight. Justice Allison Riggs won her election—full stop. Our democracy continues to be tested, but we cannot allow it to break."
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin warned that "this partisan decision has no legal basis and is an all-out assault on our democracy and the basic premise that voters decide who wins their elections, not the courts. If upheld, this could allow politicians across the country to overturn the will of the people."
"North Carolinians chose Allison Riggs to be their North Carolina Supreme Court justice," Martin stressed. "They won't stand for Republicans trying to take their votes away or those of active duty North Carolina military. It's six months past time for Jefferson Griffin to concede this race that he lost."
Bob Phillips, executive director of the nonpartisan voting rights organization Common Cause North Carolina, was similarly engaged, saying: "Today's ruling is a disgrace. This poorly conceived decision is an extreme overreach and sides with a sore loser candidate over the citizens of our state. If allowed to stand, the ruling would inject chaos into North Carolina's elections in ways that could disenfranchise tens of thousands of lawful voters and invite similar challenges nationwide."
Phillips continued:
Let's be clear: these North Carolina voters did absolutely nothing wrong. They followed the rules and cast ballots that should count. To say otherwise now is an affront to the rule of law and our Constitution.
If Griffin gets his way, never again will the people of North Carolina be able to have confidence in the outcome of our elections. Instead, Griffin's reckless lawsuit will open the door to an endless stream of other sore loser candidates who will attempt to throw out enough votes until they can cheat their way into office.
This fight is not over. We are confident that the courts will ultimately see Griffin's ploy for what it is: an unconstitutional attack on our freedom to vote.
"The people of North Carolina will continue to protest against Griffin's outrageous attack on our rights," he added, "as we continue our work to protect our family members, friends, and neighbors who are targeted by Griffin's disgraceful scheme."
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