BREAKING: Jefferson Griffin Concedes

 

Bryan Anderson just blasted out the news that sore loser Jefferson Griffin has conceded his misguided attempt to steal the NC Supreme Court race from Justice Allison Riggs.

No doubt, the sledgehammer opinion written by Fed Judge Richard Myers had a good deal to do with it.

Great Day in the Morning

 

RALEIGH -- Chief U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers, an appointee of Donald Trump, ruled that Jefferson Griffin, a judge on the state Court of Appeals, cannot “change the rules of the game after it had been played.” 

Myers ordered the state Board of Elections not to throw out any votes and to certify the results of the election as they were at the close of the canvass period, with Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs winning by 734 votes.

On the issue of absentee votes from overseas, one group that Jefferson Griffin had targeted because they weren't required to present photographic proof of identity, Judge Myers wrote (annotated by me):

The North Carolina Board of Elections (the "State Board"), on a bipartisan and unanimous basis [including the vote of Republican member "Four" Eggers], exempted those voters from the voter ID law; on April 1, 2024, the State Board, pursuant to its rule-making authority under state law, promulgated a final rule which provided that overseas military and civilian voters were not required to submit a copy of their photo ID with their absentee ballot. An identical temporary administrative rule had already been in effect for eight months before promulgation of the final rule. The final rule was then on the books for over seven months prior to the election, and it went unchallenged. In the months leading up to the election, the State Board also publicized guidance to overseas voters which informed them that they were exempt from the voter ID law. Thousands of overseas voters then, on election day, relied on the State Board's rule and its guidance. In fact, they had to. Overseas voters submit their ballots through an online portal that lacked any mechanism for a voter to attach a copy of their photo ID.

Here's the kicker that Judge Myers highlighted: Griffin challenged only the absentee overseas ballots from a select number of counties -- not all of the 100 -- counties like Wake which are heavily Democratic. Myers pungently points out that the Republicans on both the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court had actually agreed with Griffin's bizarre selective targeting. Both of those courts had ordered that Griffin's hit list of voters must somehow "cure" their votes by proving their identities to the State Board of Elections; otherwise, their votes would be thrown out.

Is he still smirking
this morning?

Judge Myers wrote (and don't you just love the use of effectuation?):

...the court finds that effectuation of the North Carolina Court of Appeals and Supreme Court's orders would violate the equal protection and substantive due process rights of overseas military and civilian voters.

Griffin can, and probably will appeal Judge Myers -- given Griffin's history of self-immolation. But how a higher court would turn aside Myers' clear legal logic is a question for your Magic 8 Ball. And how Jefferson Griffin shakes off the devastating memory of his incredible arrogance when he's up for reelection to the NC Court of Appeals in 2028 -- that's a project for all of us. We shall not forget.

NCGOP's Wet Dream of Controlling Elections Becomes Real

 

Four Eggers
Photo Jesse Barber

Four Eggers is so proud.

After a 3-judge panel of Superior Court judges ruled the Republicans' elections takeover law unconstitutional last week, three anonymous Court of Appeals judges (Jefferson Griffin rumored to be one of them, so there's a possible explanation for the secrecy) on Wednesday set that lower-court ruling aside (in an unsigned two-sentence ruling that offered no legal reasoning whatsoever) and completely green-lit the takeover of the State Board of Elections by a Republican hack, Dave Boliek, the new state Auditor.

What had once been the right of the duly elected governor to appoint the members of the State Board is now a part of the portfolio of a totally inexperienced but highly partisan official who is guaranteed to please his GOP bosses. The decision came from the Court of Appeals with no oral arguments, no public explanation or discussion, and no acknowledgment that this appallingly partisan decision has been previously considered unconstitutional by numerous courts who have understood a power grab when they saw it.

Yesterday, the new elections czar Boliek immediately appointed the three most partisan Republicans he was told to appoint, including the notorious Watauga County attorney Stacy C. Eggers IV ("Four") as the voting majority on the board. Boliek will also be privileged to appoint the chairs of all county boards, which are guaranteed to also turn majority Republican.

In addition to the travesty of judicial over-reach, we can now look forward to early voting plans that intentionally disable voting blocs disfavored by Eggers and his chums, among other mischief. There is also worry, naturally, that the new GOP power structure will find a way to award that Supreme Court seat to Jefferson Griffin.

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.

The Slow-Motion Mugging of Allison Riggs

 

I've spent some time trying to grok what the "North Carolina Four" on the state's Supreme Court -- Paul Newby, Phil Berger Jr., Tamara Barringer, and Trey Allen -- decided on Friday in the Griffin v. Riggs rigamarole. And then what was decided yesterday after Riggs appealed in Federal Court. First, the Fab Four overturned the 2-1 decision by the Court of Appeals that accepted Jefferson Griffin's argument that over 60,000 ballots were illegal and must be "cured" to count. Instead, the NC Four accepted those 60,000 ballots as valid, but cherrypicked themselves enough votes cast by mail from overseas by a tranch of liberal sojourners who didn't photocopy their picture ids. The Supreme Court ordered the Court of Appeals to access the eligibility of over 5,500 voters, most of them overseas voters whose absentee ballots were not accompanied by a photocopy of a photo ID or ID Exception Form. Anderson Alerts has a spreadsheet available here listing all the voters whose ballots remain in question, "anywhere from 1,409 to 5,509." There's actually an opportunity to particularly target the "lean-Democratic" vote in the urban counties of Buncombe, Forsyth, and Durham. Challenged voters have 30 days to cure their ballots. Tall order.

Allison Riggs, who won the election by over 700 votes, promptly appealed the Fab Four decision to Federal court, where it landed in front of Judge Richard Myers (who's had a hand in the Griffin v. Riggs case before), a Trump appointee who ordered that the Supreme Court's previous order must proceed, but the election will not be certified until Judge Myers sez it's certified.

Jefferson Griffin is neither a gentleman nor a decent human being. His use of the law has produced a perversion of the law that shows me exactly the kind of "justice" he pursues. He's not fit to sit in judgment of the world's cringiest grin contest.

I don't know what we do when they finalize Griffin's theft of Riggs's election. It's going to feel like Bastille fury rising in the gullet, isn't it? Then what?

Judge Toby Hampson Dissents

 

Judge Toby Hampson

Friday was a bad day on the thoroughly corrupt NC Court of Appeals. Two Republicans on a three-judge panel defied logic, agreed with the man who lost his race for the Supreme Court, and against all precedent ordered that some 61,682 challenged voters will have to prove their identities and their eligibility to vote last November. Last November. If any of those 61,682 voters don't get the message "to cure their votes" or otherwise don't answer to the demand, their votes will be thrown out. The Republican end-game, of course, is to declare Jefferson Griffin the winner.

Judge Toby Hampson, the 3rd justice hearing the case, dissented: 

To be clear: on the Record before us, Petitioner [Jefferson 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. Every single voter challenged by Petitioner in this appeal, both here and abroad, cast their absentee, early, or overseas ballot by following every instruction they were given to do so. Their ballots were accepted. Their ballots were counted. The results were canvassed. None of these challenged voters was given any reason to believe their vote would not be counted on election day or included in the final tallies. The diligent actions these voters undertook to exercise their sacred fundamental right to vote was, indeed, the same as every other similarly situated voter exercising their voting right in the very same 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.

 

The Arguments in Jefferson Griffin v. Allison Riggs before the Ct of Appeals

 

Jefferson Griffin.
He's had that pat of butter in his mouth
for months.

Yesterday before a 3-judge panel of Court of Appeals judges -- two Republicans and one Democrat -- sore-loser Jefferson Griffin's attorney argued that "the right to vote is not absolute,” especially when a margin of 700-odd votes separate his client from his stubborn goal. Griffin's side came up with the wild theory that over 66,000 voters should have their rights axxed to suit the needs of ambition. Jefferson Griffin, acting wildly outside the law of logic and fairness, evidently thinks his fellow Republicans at the highest echelons of the North Carolina judiciary will save his sorry ass out of pure and utter partisan loyalty.

Raymond Bennett, the attorney representing Allison Riggs, boiled the defense down to essentials: “For more than 200 years, elections have proceeded in this country under a principle so basic that it is known on every elementary school playground: You cannot change the rules after the game has been played,” he said. “If you lose, you accept defeat graciously.”

Griffin won't, and he's evidently depending on tribal allegiances to further corrupt the very structure of justice in North Carolina.

Hattip to Democracy Docket for the direct quotes.

Rumplestiltskin Is Dragging the Allison Riggs Case

 

Lynn Bonner, for NCNewsline:

Chief Justice Paul Newby

The [Paul Newby] state Supreme Court has rejected a request to speed up the case Judge Jefferson Griffin brought against the state Board of Elections in his attempt to win a seat on the high court.

The State Board and Justice Allison Riggs wanted the case to go right from the trial court, where they won, to the Supreme Court, skipping the Appeals Court. Griffin opposed the move.

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the Board and Riggs’ request in a 4-2 vote.

What it's really about:

If the Appeals Court rules in Griffin’s favor, and the Supreme Court splits 3-3, the Appeals Court decision will stand. In a previous order, three of the Republican Supreme Court justices indicated they are open to Griffin’s arguments. [Republicans have an 11-4 numerical advantage on the NC Court of Appeals. The three Supremes who said they were "open" to Griffin -- Newby, Phil Berger Jr., and Tamara Barringer.]

If the Supreme Court had split 3-3 after agreeing to take the case directly from the trial court, the trial court’s decision in favor of Riggs and the Board would have stood.

Chief Justice Paul Newby is not anything if not a highly partisan, self-righteous, and spiteful ... lawyer. Parroted by two highly partisan associate justices, Baby Berger and Tamara. 

In her dissent, Associate Justice Anita Earls was as incisive and brilliant as she always is. She wrote that skipping the Appeals Court "would have been in keeping with past practice in other cases": 

Judge Riggs 

“There is strong justification for this Court to expeditiously address, with transparency, the significant issues in this case that go to the heart of what democracy requires under the state Constitution,” she wrote.

“Judge Jefferson Griffin’s opposition to the bypass petition begins by asserting that this Court should not hear this case because, as a Court of six members, we might split 3-3 leaving the lower court’s ruling as the final ruling in the case. In other words, he asks us not to hear the case because he might lose. Such outcome-determined reasoning has no place in a court committed to the rule of law.”

In a statement last night, Judge Riggs [who has recused herself from this case] said. “No matter how long this drags out, I will continue to defend our state and federal Constitutions and North Carolinians’ fundamental freedoms. As constitutional officers, judges must respect the will of voters. My commitment to upholding the rule of law is why voters elected me to keep my seat more than 3 months ago.”

Phil Berger Sends a Panicked Message to NC's Chief Justice

 

First reporter who got this out appears to have been Bryan Anderson (whose Anderson Alerts on Substack is required reading). 

Mr. Chief Justice

Looks like Phil Berger knows just how destructive to Republican rule, going forward, and to the entire North Carolina judicial system, how utterly destructive a Paul Newby Supreme Court ruling in Jefferson Griffin's favor would be, giving him that lusted-for seat on the Court in the most cynical way. So, speaking to the press two days ago, Phil Berger sent a message to our Rumplestiltskin Chief Justice: Don't do it, you dolt! Even though his comment singled out Jefferson Griffin and not Newby, any fool can see that Berger's real concern is the naked and crazy partisanship of the little man at the top of the Court who has already said publicly that he likes Griffin's chances.

In a rare public rebuke of a fellow Republican, GOP Senate leader Phil Berger on Tuesday suggested Griffin’s effort to remove voters over clerical issues was a bridge too far.

“The equities are with the voters there,” Berger told reporters on Tuesday. “I don’t think that they had a way of knowing that that was a deficiency as far as their registration is concerned."

Question remains: Will Newby get the message? Certainly, Jefferson Griffin has already shown he's not letting up, so it falls on the conservative super-majority on the NC Supremes to save the NCGOP from itself.

 

Another Set-Back for Jefferson Griffin, But Will It Matter To the Newby Court?

This happened last Friday, as reported by Jeffrey Billman in The Assembly: 

Wake County Special Superior Court Judge William Pittman rejected Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to overturn his 734-vote loss to Justice Allison Riggs in last year’s state Supreme Court race on Friday, ruling that the State Board of Elections had not erred when it dismissed his challenge in December.

Subhead sez, "The decision isn’t the end of legal battles over the state Supreme Court race, but it is a setback for Griffin’s effort to throw out thousands of votes." All of the issues will eventually meld together before the NC Supreme Court led by partisan Republican Paul Newby.

Griffin has gone largely into hiding since he launched his highly irregular attempt to overturn the last election. But he was present Friday in Judge Pittman's court -- blue suit, yellow tie.

People vs. Griffin Rally in Boone: Day/Time/Location

 

Monday, February 17, 4-6 p.m.

Hatchett Coffee, 150 Den Mac Drive, East Boone

Here's the link for registering to attend: https://www.mobilize.us/commoncause/event/753571/

Jefferson Griffin Has Become a Parody of a "Judge"

 

Grounds for Recusal

 

Judge Tamara Barringer

NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby’s wife, Macon Newby, contributed $6,400 to Jefferson Griffin’s campaign in June 2023. and Griffin has described Newby as his "mentor."

Brent Barringer, Associate Justice Tamara Barringer’s husband, also gave Griffin at least $6,400 for his Supreme Court campaign, according to campaign finance records.

These people will ultimately determine who won the Supreme Court election between Griffin and Allison Riggs. They're not about to acknowledge any factors that would seem to demand recusal because of campaign contributions given in the name of their spouses.

NC Supremes Drag Allison Riggs

 

Okay, a thing happened last Wednesday at the NC Supreme Court that I kind of ignored even though the headline writers opted for calling it a defeat for Jefferson Griffin (who's been trying to purloin a Supreme Court seat for himself. Where have you been?), but the Court's refusal to grant Griffin an order to fast-track throwing out legal and legitimate votes incrementally until he can achieve the desired majority over Allison Riggs -- the Court's denial of Griffin was accompanied by a refusal to lift the stay preventing certification of the race by the State Board of Elections. The Court is throwing the case back for trial to the lower courts -- first Superior, then Court of Appeals, and thence, finally, to Paul Newby's coven of partisans for the ultimate decision: Shall we continue to have Allison Riggs on the Court, or will Jefferson Griffin succeed in undermining the democratic rule of law and eternally besmirch the Court?

In other words, maybe they can just keep Riggs off by dragging out the process for years.

Jeffrey Billman published in The Assembly an intense unpacking of the stuff that the judges wrote in their unanimous decision to deny Griffin's fast-track scheme -- all five Republican judges and Anita Earls, the lone Democrat, wrote their own opinions. Earls dissented on the refusal to lift the stay on declaring a winner. Earls, who gets under Newby's skin faster than any chigger, points out in her opinion that under state law (Billings includes a link) leaving a temporary stay in place for a trial indicates that “the petitioner is likely to prevail” -- kind of a dead give-away that her Republican colleagues are sending a message to the lower courts of their desired outcome.

Newby flashed his conspiratorial backside in his concurring opinion, according to Billings, called it “highly unusual” that Griffin was ahead on election night but fell behind when all the votes were counted. "It’s unclear whether Newby meant to raise the possibility of fraud or vote-counting improprieties—which Griffin has not alleged—but it’s not unusual for late absentee and provisional ballots to shift leads in close elections."

Newby’s comments “show a complete lack of understanding of how elections are conducted,” said Gerry Cohen, a Wake County Board of Elections member and former General Assembly special counsel. [Cohen is the authority on NC election law, since he helped draft most of it.]

Billings draws attention to why last Wednesday's decision doesn't look like any kind of victory for Riggs:

Newby also chided Griffin’s critics for accusing him of trying to “disenfranchise” voters. He called Griffin’s complaints “valid” and said they “may affect the outcome of the election.” Barringer and Justice Phil Berger Jr. cosigned.

That's some kind of a signal, no?

But wait! Parallel but separate legal action is also proceeding in the Federal system. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has been petitioned by Riggs to take the case away from the state on the basis that Griffin's request would retroactively disenfranchise voters and thereby "violate numerous federal civil rights laws,” including the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. Oral arguments in this case begin tomorrow.

Jefferson Griffin Blinks in the Most Pathetic Way Imaginable

Judge Jefferson "Crazy Eyes" Griffin

Trying to keep up with all the moving parts of Jefferson Griffin's scheme to steal the Supreme Court election from Allison Riggs.

Recall the posting here on January 8th: "Conservative Majority on NC Supreme Court Fractures Over Griffin Attempt To Steal the Election." The Republican who disagreed most vociferously with Griffin's proposal to throw out over 60,000 legitimate votes, Associate Justice Richard Dietz, wrote

“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."

Anderson Reports has out this morning news of an updated court filing from Griffin in which he blinks in the most pathetic way imaginable:

Seeming to recognize Dietz’s criticism, Griffin on Tuesday asked the state Supreme Court to consider a phased ruling, where it would first direct the 5,509 ballots from overseas voters without photo ID be tossed out first. If a retabulation showed Griffin overtaking Riggs’ 734-vote lead, Griffin would want the election to be certified in his favor. If a retabulation showed Riggs still ahead, however, Griffin would want the Supreme Court to proceed to the issue of 267 overseas voters who don’t reside in North Carolina and the 60,273 voters with incomplete registration, if necessary.

In other hilarious words, just toss out ballots until I say quit, and maybe it won't take disenfranchising the full 60,000 to give me Seat 6.

If I were a standup comic, I'd be exploiting this lame slug of a politician for big laughs. 

BREAKING -- The Street Theater of Kate Barr

 

One of my favorite, disruptive Democrats of 2024, Kate Barr, is right now, on Tuesday, January 14, reading aloud the over 60,000 names of legitimate voters Jefferson Griffin intends to disenfranchise to grab a seat on the NC Supreme Court. Kate is standing in front of the Supreme Court bldg in Raleigh, with a podium and a microphone. She began reading all 60,000 names this morning at 6 a.m. and expects to finish by 11 p.m. tonight.

It's a new public way to protest the outrageousness of Griffin's determination to win at all costs, including throwing out thousands of legitimate votes. Griffin is currently begging the Paul Newby Supreme Court to ignore the actual vote count -- Allison Riggs won by over 700 votes, after two different recounts -- and simply give Supreme Court Seat 6 to him.

Griffin is a special kind of sinister. Why is he a judge at all? (He currently sits on the 15-member Court of Appeals).

More about Kate Barr under this photo.

Kate Barr should be familiar to WatWatch readers. In 2024 she ran a funny, satiric, self-deprecating NC Senate campaign for District 37 (mainly deep-red Iredell). Her self-mocking motto: "Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can't Win!" Indeed, she couldn't. But she generated something of a movement anyway, raising both money and some justified hell, and her rallying of progressive voters in such a district also helped a statewide candidate like Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs to win.

You go, Kate!

Common Cause Attacks the Injustice of Jefferson Griffin

 

Common Cause of NC has been driving a mobile billboard around North Carolina towns and cities, blasting Jefferson Griffin's determination to have the NC Supreme Court overturn the election and give Seat 6 on the Court to him. 

It's one of those electronic message boards, with revolving illuminated pages:

The better panel is the one specific to whichever county the billboard is touring, like the photo from Carteret Co. below, that enumerates the number of local people singled out in Griffin's petition to have their votes disallowed -- since the names of the 60,000 voters on Griffin's list is part of the public record. (I didn't count all the names from Watauga. There appear to be hundreds. At a glance, it looks like Griffin's people grabbed every foreign-sounding name, especially the Hispanic ones.)

There was video on Twitter yesterday of the billboard cruising Raleigh past the NC Supreme Court building. The message for Wake County: over 6,000 voters targeted by Griffin's petition. https://x.com/CommonCauseNC/status/1877010468457349347

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.

Chickens Home To Roost: NC Supremes Must Now Decide in Jefferson Griffin vs. 60,000 Voters

 

Copying the reporting of Lynn Bonner for the NC Newsline:

Jefferson Griffin and Allison Riggs

Federal U.S. District Judge Richard Myers II on Monday sent Republican Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin’s elections case back to state court, leaving the outcome of his race in the hands of the GOP majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court.

A few hours after Myers issued the order, the state Board of Elections and incumbent Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs filed notice of appeal to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Riggs leads Griffin by 734 votes, but Griffin has filed a series of voter protests. Griffin wants the state Supreme Court, where Republicans hold a 5-2 majority, to throw out more than 60,000 votes on the belief that erasing them will allow him to defeat Riggs.

Democrats want to win back the Supreme Court majority by the next round of redistricting in 2031, and holding Riggs’ seat is an important first step in achieving that goal.

After the state Board of Elections rejected his protests last month, Griffin asked the state Supreme Court to step in to stop the board from certifying the election results and toss out the votes he’s contesting.

The Board of Elections had Griffin’s petition transferred to federal court, but Myers wrote in an order Monday that none of Griffin’s challenges “necessarily raise an issue of federal law.”

Most of the votes Griffin wants thrown out are those his campaign claims were cast by people who did not include a driver’s license or partial Social Security number on their voter registration applications. People who did not include those numbers on their applications are not legally registered, Republican lawyers have argued. Many of those voters have been voting regularly for years.

The Republican Party used the same argument last year in a lawsuit seeking to have more than 225,000 voters purged from the registration rolls or to be forced to cast provisional ballots. Myers partially dismissed that suit.

The state Board of Elections’ written order filed after it rejected Griffin’s protests says that just because driver’s license or partial Social Security numbers didn’t show up in the voter registration file doesn’t mean voters didn’t supply them.

A brief filed on behalf of the League of Women Voters of North Carolina and individual voters emphasizes that point. Griffin’s target list is inaccurate, the brief says, because it fails to account for voters who did not have to supply the information or for data entry errors or database mismatches that resulted when women married and changed their last names.

Anne Tindall, one of the lawyers with the Protect Democracy Project representing the League and individual voters, said in an interview last week that the women and non-white voters were overrepresented on the list of 225,000 people Republicans originally wanted purged from the rolls. Those are voters who are more likely to have hyphenated names or names people misspell, she said.

“No one has come forward with information about any single person on these lists not providing all the information that’s requested of them,” Tindall said.“Data errors, typos, name changes” overlay all of it, she said.

Myers said in his order he considered the League of Women Voters’ brief.

What's Going On With the NC Supreme Court Race?

 

Why is this man smiling?

Incumbent Democratic Associate Justice Allison Riggs beat Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin for her seat on the NC Supreme Ct by 734 votes-- Riggs's winning margin after two recounts. Republican Griffin wouldn't and won't concede, has exhausted his appeals to the NC State Board of Elections, and is now petitioning the Paul Newby Supreme Court (on which Justice Riggs still sits but who immediately recused herself from the Griffin suit) to stay the election on the grounds that some 60,000 voters had cast illegal votes. Griffin alleges that those 60,000 registrations are illegal because the registration forms are missing important data.

The idea of using incomplete voter registration as an excuse for throwing out votes seems to have been hatched in a secret group chat in July of 2024 involving the highest echelons of election denialism in North Carolina. So said ProPublica, which somehow or other obtained a recording of that phone call (or Zoom meetup or whatever it was) and spilled the beans just before Christmas that this is what happened back in...

July 2024 -- The call involving the so-called Election Integrity Network, including presumably the notorious Cleta Mitchell who can spot fraud in her oatmeal -- this bunch of MAGA activists tossed around potential tactics that might need to be employed to win the election. One particular idea won approval, that they individually or as a group "try to get the courts or state election board to throw out hundreds of thousands of ballots cast by voters whose registrations are missing a driver’s license number and the last four digits of a Social Security number." That argument depended on the Federal HAVA Act (Help America Vote) which now requires both driver's license and SS#. Older state registration forms did not.

It's important to underline the most significant revelation in ProPublica's disclosure of the July call: 

The idea of using clerical messiness as an excuse to disenfranchise voters, according to what ProPublica heard on their tape, "was resisted by two activists on the call," "including the leader of the North Carolina chapter of the Election Integrity Network" [Jim Womack?]. The data was missing not because voters had done something wrong but largely as a result of an administrative error by the state. The leader [Womack?] said the idea was “voter suppression” and “100%” certain to fail in the courts" (ProPublica). If that was Jim Womack raising the objection, then Jim Womack is a straight shooter.

August 2024 --  The Republican National Committee and the state Republican Party put into action the plan from July. They sued the State Board of Elections (SBOE), seeking to disenfrachise some 225,000 registered voters, relying on the legal theory of the Cleta Mitchell election-deniars. The suit went to Federal Judge Richard E. Myers II, a Trump appointee.

October 14th -- Moving quickly, Judge Myers hears the NCGOP petition to disenfranchise over 200K voters.

October 17th -- Judge Myers rules: dismisses a big part of the GOP petition -- disenfranchising those 200K -- but sends a subsidiary constitutional issue back to state Superior Court (where I guess it still percolates, if slowly)

That background from last October helps explain where Jefferson Griffin has been coming from in his far-out refusal to admit defeat, Because the whole Griffin argument for throwing out 60,000 actual votes -- not just voter registrations -- is the same "missing info" argument that Judge Myers heard back in October. (Though ... WARNING! Myers dismissed the GOP suit from August on the technicality of "standing," so he didn't have to deal with some of the harder legal stuff. Griffin would appear to have standing in this present case, no?)

Here's my timeline for more recent developments:

December 11th -- The NC State Board of Elections denies Griffin's request to simply throw out the votes of 60,000 people.

December 18th -- Griffin files what's known as a "writ of prohibition," asking the state's high court to block certification of the election, and to invalidate some 60,000 challenged ballots because of missing driver's license numbers or the last four digits of SS #s, etc. Griffin's petition included the plea, in ALL CAPS: "Immediate action requested BEFORE Monday, 23 December."

December 19th -- State Board of Elections gets the Griffin case removed to Federal court. Judge Richard E. Myers II of Wilmington assigned to hear it.

December 20th -- Judge Myers bats down the Griffin team's next move, which is to petition for a temporary restraining order to be slapped on the SBOE to block it from certifying the election. Judge Myers says no dice.

December 27th -- Judge Myers receives petition from Griffin's side to move this case back to the NC Supreme Court, and he significantly orders the SBOE to explain why he should keep a case involving a dispute over the recent state Supreme Court election. The judge ordered the elections board to "show cause" by Jan. 1 why the case should not return to the North Carolina Supreme Court.

January 1, 2025 -- The "immediate judicial action" requested of the Paul Newby Supreme Court on Dec. 18th (above) has, of course, not happened, because Federal Judge Myers still has control of the case, although he showed some willingness (Dec. 27th) to let it go back to a more partisanly compliant Supreme Court,