Conservative Majority on NC Supreme Court Fractures Over Griffin Attempt To Steal the Election

 

Trey Allen and Richard Dietz

Jefferson Griffin's petition to simply throw out 60,000 valid votes in his attempt to unseat Associate Justice Allison Riggs has produced what we rarely see in North Carolina, two conservative justices -- Richard Dietz and Trey Allen, both Republicans -- who either dissent strongly and on paper (Dietz) or otherwise suggest that he was not in favor of the idea of overturning the election (Allen). (Indebted to Bryan Anderson, the best political reporter currently working in NC, for this news.)

After Federal U.S. District Court Judge Richard Myers II remanded the Griffin petition back to the NC Supreme Court on Monday, immediately the NC Supremes issued an order blocking the state Board of Elections (SBOE) from certifying Allison Riggs the winner of the election while it conducts its own mini-trial of the matter (as though there were a legitimate reason to delay certification).

Republican Justice Dietz wrote "a scathing six-page dissent" (Anderson's characterization), saying in part that a petition to overturn an election shouldn't even be considered by the Court:

“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. “It will lead to doubts about the finality of vote counts following an election, encourage novel legal challenges that greatly delay certification of the results, and fuel an already troubling decline in public faith in our elections.”

For his part, and although he agreed with the Republican majority to hear Griffin's suit, Trey Allen was perhaps signaling his skepticism: “The Court’s order granting Judge Griffin’s motion for temporary stay should not be taken to mean that Judge Griffin will ultimately prevail on the merits,” Allen wrote.

Democratic Justice Anita Earls also dissented. That leaves three Republican justices to carry Griffin's dirty water -- Chief Justice Paul Newby and Associate Justices Tamara Barringer and Baby Berger.

Meanwhile, the SBOE has appealed to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals for permission to certify the election. The criss-crossing of state and Federal action is only one confounding element of this truly astounding attempt to steal an election via judicial action.