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'This Should Make Your Blood Boil': Top NC Court Blocks Certification of Democratic Justice's Win
One journalist warned that the state court "laid the groundwork for potentially overturning the election" in favor of Democratic Associate Justice Allison Riggs' GOP challenger, Jefferson Griffin.
Jan 07, 2025
Democracy defenders across the United States on Tuesday responded with alarm to Republicans on the North Carolina Supreme Court blocking certification of incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs' November victory to review GOP challenger Jefferson Griffin's attempt to toss out over 60,000 votes.
Over 5.5 million people voted in the election, and after two recounts, Riggs is ahead by just 734 votes. Griffin, a judge on the state Court of Appeals, has been contesting the results for weeks. The North Carolina State Board of Elections moved the case to federal court, but U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers II—an appointee of Republican U.S. President-elect Donald Trump—sent it back to the state judicial system on Monday.
Although the board notified the North Carolina Supreme Court that it intended to appeal Myers' decision—and it did so later Tuesday—four of the five Republican justices still granted the temporary stay and wrote in their order that "in the absence of a stay from federal court, this matter should be addressed expeditiously because it concerns certification of an election."
"The Republican-led North Carolina Supreme Court is now attempting to give itself sole power to decide its next member rather than the North Carolina voters who unquestionably elected Justice Riggs."
Riggs did not participate in the Tuesday decision due to her involvement with the case. The court's only other Democrat, Justice Anita Earls, dissented—arguing that Griffin's motion is "procedurally improper," and even if it were not, his request "should be denied because he has failed to meet the standard for granting preliminary relief."
"Griffin seeks to retroactively rewrite the rules of the election to tilt the playing field in his favor. His filings amount to a broadside legal attack, raising a laundry list of statutory and constitutional objections to long-established election laws," Earls wrote, calling out the high court's "indulgence of this sort of fact-free post-election gamesmanship."
Republican Justice Richard Dietz also dissented, citing "our state's corollary to a federal election doctrine known as the 'Purcell principle'" and warning that "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."
Attorneys, journalists, Democratic leaders, and political observers in North Carolina and across the country were similarly critical.
With its stay and schedule for filings over the next few weeks, "the state's highest court laid the groundwork for potentially overturning the election and handing the seat to Riggs' GOP challenger," wrote Ari Berman, Mother Jones' national voting rights correspondent.
Berman also laid out some long-term and national impacts of this battle:
Riggs' victory would give Democrats a shot at retaking the court's majority after 2028. That would allow them to oversee the state's redistricting process in 2031. That is particularly consequential because the current majority on the court upheld heavily gerrymandered maps drawn by the Republican-controlled state Legislature that allowed Republicans to pick up three U.S. House seats in November—just enough to maintain control of the chamber and ensure one-party rule in D.C.
Democratic elections lawyer Marc Elias declared on social media Tuesday that "the GOP is mounting the largest, most brazen post-election disenfranchisement effort since Trump's frivolous litigation in 2020. This time, however, they may get away with it and the legacy media is largely asleep."
Former U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who is now chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, called the state court's actions "alarming" and stressed that "the vote is the voice and the power of the people. It is not for a court to decide the outcome of an election. In a functioning democracy the will of the people—as expressed in an election—prevails."
"Should the North Carolina Supreme Court throw out lawful ballots, it could potentially overturn the results of a free and fair election—achieving the same goal as those who perpetuated a violent coup attempt on our nation's capitol just four years ago," he said, referring to the January 6, 2021 insurrection. "This must not be tolerated."
"I am concerned that the very recent actions of the court presage a continued diminution of a democracy already under attack in North Carolina," he added. "The arrogant, anti-democracy move to stop the certification of a free and fair election while this court considers whether or not to throw out 60,000 lawfully cast ballots underscores that."
The News & Observer reported Tuesday that "the vast list of challenged voters ensnared people from assistants to state lawmakers to Riggs' own parents."
According to the North Carolina newspaper:
A News & Observer analysis of the challenges found that Black voters were twice as likely to have their votes challenged as white voters.
The challenge that affected the largest number of voters was Griffin's argument that voters who did not have a driver's license number or Social Security number on file should not have been allowed to vote.
State election officials say there are myriad reasons a voter may not have those numbers in the database—many of which are no fault of their own. But Griffin argued it could lead to ineligible voters being able to cast a ballot.
Former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who left office earlier this month after two terms, said Tuesday that "Riggs won and the recount confirmed it. Republicans want to toss thousands of legal votes in the trash because they don't like the outcome. This shouldn't be about party politics—this should be about making sure every vote counts and that our elections still mean something."
The battle over the North Carolina Supreme Court is part of what The New York Timesdescribed as "the bar-fight nature of politics in the state," where voters in November also elected Democratic Gov. Josh Stein to succeed term-limited Cooper and ended the GOP supermajority in the General Assembly—leading to last-minute attempts by Republican lawmakers to limit Stein's power.
Vowing that the North Carolina Democratic Party "will continue to fight for justice," its chair, Anderson Clayton, said in a Tuesday statement that Riggs "won her seat fair and square" and "deserves her certificate of election."
"We are only in this position due to Jefferson Griffin refusing to accept the will of the people," Clayton added. "He is hell-bent on finding new ways to overthrow this election but we are confident that the evidence will show, like they did throughout multiple recounts, that she is the rightful winner in this race."
The outgoing Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair, Jaime Harrison, also weighed in, blasting "what has become a monthslong, anti-democratic campaign at taxpayers' expense against Justice Allison Riggs."
"The Republican-led North Carolina Supreme Court is now attempting to give itself sole power to decide its next member rather than the North Carolina voters who unquestionably elected Justice Riggs," he said. "Make no mistake—these craven attacks on North Carolina voters are an affront to this country's foundational values of democracy and the rule of law."
Harrison also pointed to Trump supporters' deadly invasion of the U.S. Capitol in 2021, saying that "one day after the four-year anniversary of January 6, Republicans are once again attempting to overturn an election in plain sight."
Ben Wikler, who is running to be the next DNC chair, said Tuesday that "the crisis of democracy didn't end with Trump's victory—it got worse. When North Carolina's state Supreme Court is blocking certification of a state Supreme Court election, the house is on fire."
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GOP Trifecta to Feature Legislative Attacks on Voting Rights
"The GOP wants these 'changes' to spread disinformation, justify election denialism, and gain partisan advantage," one lawyer warned.
Dec 26, 2024
A key GOP lawmaker made clear in an interview published Thursday that Republicans plan to push for a pair of their voting-related bills when they take control of both chambers of Congress and the White House next month.
Congressman Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), who campaigned for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), chairs the Committee on House Administration. He shared the GOP's plans for the American Confidence in Elections (ACE) Act and the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act in comments to The Associated Press.
"As we look to the new year with unified Republican government, we have a real opportunity to move these pieces of legislation not only out of committee, but across the House floor and into law," he said. "We need to improve Americans' confidence in elections."
The AP pointed out that "Republicans are likely to face opposition from Democrats and have little wiggle room with their narrow majorities in both the House and Senate. Steil said he expects there will be 'some reforms and tweaks' to the original proposals and hopes Democrats will work with Republicans to refine and ultimately support them."
Steil's ACE Act, which "includes nearly 50 standalone bills sponsored by members of the House Republican Conference," is "the most conservative election integrity bill to be seriously considered in the House in over 20 years," according to his committee.
Dozens of organizations wrote to Steil and Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the panel's ranking Democrat, last year that "we believe Congress has an important role to play in safeguarding free and fair elections and ensuring all Americans have the freedom to vote. Rather than furthering this goal, the ACE Act would be a substantial step backwards."
"The act would nationalize harmful and unnecessary restrictions on voting rights and roll back many of Washington, D.C.'s current pro-voter laws," the coalition explained. "Instead of proceeding with this legislation, Congress should take actions that will help voters and promote democracy such as passing legislation that will strengthen protections against discrimination in voting and expand access to the ballot for all communities."
While that bill didn't get a floor vote in the House this session, Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas) SAVE Act did—it was passed by the House 221-198 in July. Every Republican present voted for the bill and all but five House Democrats rejected it.
However, Democrats narrowly controlled the Senate, so the SAVE Act—which would require proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections—never went further in Congress, despite GOP attempts to tie it to government funding.
Morelle suggested to the AP there could be bipartisan support for some voting policies—such as federal funding for election offices, restricting foreign money in U.S. races, and possibly even identification requirements with certain protections for voters—but he also called out Republicans for spreading conspiracy theories about widespread voting by noncitizens in November.
"You haven't heard a word about this since Election Day," he noted. "It's an Election Day miracle that suddenly the thing that they had spent an inordinate amount of time describing as a rampant problem, epidemic problem, didn't exist at all."
Speaking broadly about voting bills, Morelle told the AP that "our view and the Republicans' view is very different on this point."
"They have spent most of the time in the last two years and beyond really restricting the rights of people to get to ballots—and that's at the state level and the federal level," he added. "And the SAVE Act and the ACE Act both do that—make it harder for people to vote."
Responding to the reporting on social media Thursday, lawyer and Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias said that "Trump is an autocrat. The GOP wants these 'changes' to spread disinformation, justify election denialism, and gain partisan advantage."
"Democrats need to oppose this effort," he warned. "If the GOP enacts new voter suppression laws, I can promise we will sue and win."
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How Did the GOP Win the House? Gerrymandering
According to a new analysis, Republicans won a net 16-seat advantage due to manipulated maps drawn for party advantage.
Dec 19, 2024
Many things propelled Donald Trump’s election victory. Inflation. A worldwide anti-incumbent backlash. Anger at institutions. A swing to the right among working-class voters of all racial backgrounds. And more. Analysts are still chewing on all the data (and Democrats are chewing on each other).
As we sift through the results and look forward, Republican control of the House of Representatives will matter greatly. That control is very, very narrow. And it turns out to rest on a shaky foundation of gerrymandering and manipulated maps, all encouraged by the Supreme Court.
The last time a new president took office without a “trifecta” of House and Senate control was 35 years ago. But this will be the slimmest House majority on record. With yesterday’s announcement by Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz that she will not participate in the Republican caucus, control may effectively come down to one vote.
Voters are mad as hell about a government they feel does not deliver for them. Rigged rules are a big part of why Washington too frequently does not work.
And according to my colleague Michael Li in a new analysis, Republicans won a net 16-seat advantage due to manipulated maps drawn for party advantage. (Democrats garnered an edge in 7 seats through gerrymandering, but the GOP gained a total of 23 seats that way—hence, 16 seats.)
How did this skew happen? Simply, Republican legislators control the drawing of many more districts than Democrats do. In some states, nonpartisan commissions or state courts have actually produced fairer maps. But in most places, politicians are free to press for partisan advantage.
North Carolina is split relatively evenly between Republican and Democratic voters. This year, Trump won the state even as Democrat Josh Stein swept into the governor’s mansion. However, the heavily gerrymandered legislature drew congressional maps that produced 10 seats for Republicans and only 4 for Democrats. The state high court had blocked the gerrymander, a move upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Moore v. Harper. But then a judicial election shifted partisan control of the North Carolina court, which abruptly blessed the gerrymander it had previously banned. That judicial reversal alone gave the GOP an extra 3 seats in Washington—enough to control the House.
Today Republicans are strutting, but that swagger may not last long. Speaker Mike Johnson will have to manage a fractious majority that could be defeated by one or two defections. Individual members will be empowered to extort policy concessions, no matter how extreme.
In fact, what may matter even more than the gerrymandered seats is the collapse of electoral competition. Only 27 districts nationwide saw margins of less than 5%. Lawmakers will look more nervously at the prospect of primary challenges than at the risk of alienating the broad mass of persuadable voters.
It did not have to be this way. In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, which had prevented the most egregious gerrymanders along racial lines. Then in 2019, John Roberts led the justices to rule that federal courts could not police partisan gerrymandering at all.
Congress has the power to act, and in 2022 it tried—coming within two Senate votes of passing the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which together would have barred gerrymandering for congressional seats nationwide. Both parties would have been forced to compete on a level field. (This legislation would also have undone other damage wrought by rulings such as Citizens United, which legalized the campaign system that saw Elon Musk spend a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump.)
All this is a reminder that the rules of American politics, often arcane, often hidden, bear tremendous weight. It should caution us from drawing too many conclusions about any recent victor’s supposed “mandate.”
Voters are mad as hell about a government they feel does not deliver for them. Rigged rules are a big part of why Washington too frequently does not work. Partisans must do more than battle for inches of advantage. To truly reconnect the seats of power to a sullen electorate, real reform and real competition must be part of the answer.
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