A Wrinkle in the Theft of a Supreme Court Seat

The "wrinkle" in the title ought to be a definitive foil to the corruption of the North Carolina judiciary, but I'm cynical enough by now to remember what they do with wrinkles -- they iron them out. Just disappear them with heat.

Courtroom maneuvers have never been my specialty, and I have to strain sometimes to understand legal theories, so I'm hanging very frankly on the reporting of Bryan Anderson (whose Anderson Alerts is required reading) to understand what's going forward in Republican Jefferson Griffin's quest to steal Allison Riggs's seat on the NC Supremes. 

To overturn Riggs's 734-vote victory, Griffin wanted way over 60,000 votes thrown out, including an obscure little group of 260 North Carolinians whom Griffin labeled “never residents.” And you know what? The two Republicans on the North Carolina Court of Appeals -- apparently without the most basic attempt to verify Griffin's data (?) -- simply accepted Griffin's claim and ordered the State Board of Elections to remove all 260 voters from the count. The state Supreme Court upheld that decision.

You wanna know the best part? Those 260 have no recourse, no mechanism for appeal, and actually no notice probably that their whole voter registration no longer exists.

So Bryan Anderson went snooping -- "review of public records, news clips, social media posts, and interviews" -- and soon found 16 voters -- out of no-telling-how-many there really are -- who have resided in North Carolina, or still live in North Carolina, "some having spent their entire childhood in North Carolina, continuing to pay property taxes or working in the state." But the two gullible judges swallowed Griffin's zero evidence and stupidly eliminated the basic rights of 260 voters who happened to be overseas when they requested their absentee ballots.

Notice the last one is from Watauga.

16 Alleged “Never Resident” Voters Who Stand To Have Their Ballots Wrongfully Discarded

Vidyaranya Gargeya (Guilford County): A retired professor who taught at UNC-Greensboro for 30 years who, according to the school, has visited every college in the state. He’s paid property taxes at the same suburban Guilford County home he’s owned since 2003, according to public records. And voting records show he voted in-person on Election Day eight times without issue, and has voted in every midterm and presidential general election since 2006. He appears to have cast an overseas mail-in ballot for the 2024 election. And his next door neighbor confirmed on Saturday that Gargeya does indeed live next to him.

Josiah Young (Jackson County): Young was raised in Webster, played basketball for Jackson County Early College and runs a drone photography business based in western North Carolina. Currently living in Spain.

Michelle Carrillo-Corujo (Guilford County): Corujo grew up in North Carolina. She attended Crestdale Middle School in Matthews in 2015 and has largely remained in North Carolina ever since. She graduated from UNC-Greensboro last year with a degree in political science and recently moved to the Netherlands for further academic pursuits.

Holly Arrowood (Henderson County): Arrowood has been a North Carolina voter since 2008 and has cast a ballot in-person on Election Day seven times. She also appears to still live in Chapel Hill.

Jean-Louis Mondon (Henderson County): Mondon has been a U.S. citizen since 1986, has long lived in North Carolina and has voted in the state since at least 1994. He taught English, French and Spanish at Blue Ridge Community College from 2005 to 2009, runs a Christian blog and is a private tutor and linguist.

David Eberhard (Orange County): Eberhard is a longtime neurologist and taught at UNC-Chapel Hill from 2011 to 2016.

 
Austyn Blamy (Union County): Blamy graduated from high school at Cuthbertson High School in Waxhaw and has been a seasonal swim coach there since 2018, according to her LinkedIn page. Blamy was also a D1 athlete from 2023-2024 for Liberty University’s swim team.

Ayse Babahan (Wake County): Babahan was born in North Carolina, but grew up in Istanbul. She graduated from the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York and is now an actress living overseas.

Vicki Brent (Wake County): Brent attended Millbrook High School in Raleigh from 2017 to 2021 and served on the Wake County Black Student Coalition.

 
Eric Hoffman (Wake County): Hoffman attended UNC-Chapel Hill from 2014 to 2016 and got a master’s degree in business administration and has been a registered North Carolina voter since 2011. He’s since worked out of Holly Springs and Australia.

Sergio Cutiva Valencia (Watauga County): Valencia is an Appalachian State University alum who graduated in 2022.