Third Count a Charm: Riggs Wins North Carolina Supreme Court Race
The North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) said Tuesday it won’t order a full hand recount for GOP Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin, after a partial recount confirmed incumbent Justice Allison Riggs’s (D) victory.
Griffin first requested a machine recount last month. North Carolina law allows statewide candidates to request a recount if there are 10,000 votes or less between the first- and second-place candidates.
At the time, Riggs led Griffin by 623 votes. Last week, NCSBE released the final numbers, which put Riggs ahead by 734 votes.
Griffin then requested a partial hand count, to which the NCSBE said it would randomly select precincts to conduct hand counts, and if the results differed significantly enough from the machine recount results, then the board would order a statewide hand count.
The board said in a news release Tuesday that after the partial hand recount, Riggs picked up even more votes. She garnered 70 more votes, compared to 56 more votes for Griffin. “The recounts were conducted by bipartisan teams in all 100 counties over the past week,” the release said.
In order for a full hand recount to be conducted, Griffin would have needed to pick up at least 35 more votes than Riggs in 3% of the Election Day precincts and early voting sites in each county, NCSBE said.
In a statement Tuesday, Riggs once again reiterated her victory over Griffin.
“The initial vote count confirmed Justice Riggs’ victory by 734 votes, and a statewide machine recount confirmed her win by the exact same margin,” her campaign said. “The sample hand recount, which also confirms her win, is the third and final count of votes.”
Meanwhile, the board is set to hold a public hearing Wednesday on the thousands of ballot challenges filed last month by Griffin.
When Griffin requested the machine recount he challenged the validity of over 60,000 ballots, including ones from voters with prior felony convictions, people whose voter registrations may be incomplete and military and overseas voters. Riggs’s campaign said Friday that Riggs filed a brief urging the board to deny all of Griffin’s protests.
An earlier version of this story wrongly stated that the protests were from Gannon. The protests were filed by Griffin.
Previous update, Dec. 6
Republican North Carolina Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin on Friday filed two legal actions in an attempt to expedite a decision from the state election board on the thousands of ballots he challenged in a tight race against Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs.
Griffin, an appeals court judge, asked a state court to issue a writ of mandamus against the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE), which means Griffin wants a court to compel the board to issue a decision. He filed the same request with the state appeals court.
Griffin in November filed challenges with the board to over 60,000 ballots. His petition says the board is “unreasonably delaying a decision on these protests.”
“By delaying a decision on these protests, a winner of the election cannot be certified,” the petition says. “And the delay in certifying a winner undermines the public’s trust in the editorial process.” Griffin asked the court to respond to his request by no later than Monday.
According to NSCBE spokesman Patrick Gannon, the board informed Griffin’s campaign Thursday that it plans to hear his protests in a public meeting Wednesday, Dec. 11.
“The State Board must meet publicly to decide the protest, as a public board [is] subject to North Carolina’s Open Meetings Law,” Gannon told Democracy Docket via email. “The Board must also provide at least 48 hours’ advance notice to the public before convening such a meeting.”
The ballot challenges sparked another legal action on Friday, when the North Carolina Democratic Party sued the election board, alleging the protests demand that the board “violate federal laws safeguarding North Carolinians’ fundamental right to have their votes counted.”
The party asked the federal district court to issue a declarative judgment that federal law prohibits the board from invalidating votes in an election “on the basis of the mass, systemic challenges lodged by the Protests.”
The Supreme Court race has been ongoing since Election Day and has remained extremely close. Griffin, who was trailing Riggs, last month requested a machine recount, which further confirmed Riggs’s lead. On Tuesday, Riggs declared victory.
Gannon said the candidates’ final briefs in response to the protests were to be submitted to the state board by the end of Friday. In a statement, Riggs’s campaign said she filed a brief urging the board to deny all of Gannon’s protests.
North Carolina Supreme Court GOP candidate Jefferson Griffin requested a hand recount after he challenged thousands of ballots across the state in the tight race against his Democratic opponent Allison Riggs, who declared victory.
“Recounts are a normal part of the process in a close race. What isn’t normal is the way my opponent is attempting to engineer a new outcome by challenging more than 60,000 votes across our state,” Riggs said in a post on X Monday.
A couple of weeks ago, Griffin asked for a machine recount, which showed that Riggs won the election. In an email statement on Tuesday, Riggs said that the “results of the recount were identical to the original vote count” and that she won the race.
On Tuesday, the North Carolina State Board of Elections announced that due to Griffin’s request, it would randomly select precincts to conduct hand counts, and if the results differ significantly enough from the machine recount results, then the board will order a statewide hand count.
Riggs, one of two liberal justices on the seven-member court, was appointed by Gov. Roy Cooper (D) in September 2023. Now, her race against Griffin, a judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, is extremely close.
When Griffin requested the machine recount he challenged the validity of over 60,000 ballots, including ones from voters with prior felony convictions, people whose voter registrations may be incomplete and military and overseas voters.
“My opponent is relying on legal theories that have already been dismissed by our State Board of Elections, as well as state and federal courts, to try and toss votes instead of conceding,” Riggs said in a post on X.
This week, the North Carolina Republican Party expressed its continued support of Griffin’s challenges regarding “specific irregularities and discrepancies in the handling and counting of ballots.”
“It’s important to remember that these actions are being taken because of the administration of elections: while Democrats and their allies in the media seem to want specific outcomes, our effort is about consistency, fairness, and transparency,” North Carolina GOP Communications Director Matt Mercer said in a statement.
Meanwhile, North Carolina Republicans have also been pushing anti-democratic actions in the legislature — where their party controls both chambers.
The state Senate passed Senate Bill 382 on Nov. 20, which would strip power away from the incoming governor, Josh Stein (D), and hand more power to Republicans.
Most notably, the bill would make the state board of elections — which is currently an agency under the governor —- a board operating under the state auditor. This would mean the governor could no longer appoint members to the board. The incoming state auditor, Republican Dave Boliek, would have this power instead.
Also, under this legislation, when the governor appoints a judge to the Court of Appeals or a justice to the Supreme Court, they could only choose someone from a list of recommendations provided by the political party the outgoing judge is affiliated with.
This bill would also shorten the time frames for voters to request absentee ballots during the election and cure their ballots after.
Cooper vetoed the bill on Monday, saying that the “legislation is a sham” and it “violates the state constitution.” The Senate overrode the veto and the bill will be sent to the House, which will consider it next week.
If this bill is challenged in state courts, the case could end up in front of the North Carolina Supreme Court — which is still missing a justice a month after the 2024 general election.
Read the North Carolina State Board of Election’s release here.