The Trump administration is suing the state Board of Elections over what it says are violations of federal law for failing to maintain an accurate voter registration file.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday, the U.S. Justice Department said the lack of driver’s license numbers, partial Social Security numbers, or unique identifying numbers connected to some voter registration records violates the Help America Vote Act.

The Justice Department wants the elections board to ask all voters who do not have the proper numbers in the statewide database for the information. The elections board is to attach unique numbers to voters who do not have those other identifiers.

The allegations in the DOJ lawsuit mirror an issue Republican Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin raised as he tried to overturn Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs’ election victory by throwing out votes.

The DOJ claims also mirror a state Republican Party and Republican National Committee federal lawsuit contending that people who do not have the government digits connected to their electronic file are not legally registered to vote. It’s unclear how many registrations don’t have the numbers, but the GOP sought to purge about 225,000 voters over the issue.

The elections board did not do enough to remedy the problem of missing identification numbers when conservative activist Carol Snow raised it in a complaint in 2023, the DOJ lawsuit says.

The state was using voter registration forms that made it look like providing a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number was optional. In some cases, the information was not typed into the database even when voters did supply it.

The board, then controlled by Democrats, voted unanimously to make the recommended changes to the voter registration form, but “declined to take sufficient steps to cure their continuing violations” by contacting voters, the lawsuit says.

Republicans took control of the elections board this month and appointed a Republican executive director.

In a statement, Executive Director Sam Hayes said:

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Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to throw out votes on military and overseas absentee ballots is unconstitutional, federal District Judge Richard Myers ruled Monday.

In a 68-page ruling, Myers said the state Board of Elections should certify the election results based on the tally of all eligible votes in November, which means Democratic incumbent Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs would prevail in the race for the seat on the high court over Griffin. Her 734-vote lead over Griffin was confirmed in two recounts. Myers stayed his order for seven days to give Griffin time to appeal.

Riggs said in a statement Monday night that the ruling is a vindication for voters.

“Today, we won,” her statement said. “I’m proud to continue upholding the Constitution and the rule of law as North Carolina’s Supreme Court Justice.”

In the long-running dispute over voter eligibility, Griffin, a judge on the state Court of Appeals, was seeking to throw out more than 60,000 votes covering three categories of voters.

The largest group of voters, more than 60,000, were people who Griffin claimed were not properly registered because they did not provide a partial Social Security number or driver’s license number on their voter registration applications. Over the months, voters came forward to say they did provide those numbers, but the digits did not appear on the statewide database due to typos or data mismatches.

The state Supreme Court majority said those votes should count.

Griffin also challenged military and overseas absentee voters in a handful of Democratic counties for not providing photo ID with their ballots. The state Board of Elections did not require any military and overseas absentee voters to send in photo ID.

The state Supreme Court majority said the absentee voters Griffin challenged needed to submit a photo within 30 days of notification if they wanted their votes to count.

Myers, a Trump nominee, wrote that the state Board of Elections should not follow the Supreme Court’s orders. Retroactively invalidating military and overseas voters’ ballots violates those voters’ due process rights, and the “cure” process violates their equal protection rights, he wrote.

Requiring military and overseas absentee voters in one county to “undertake additional efforts to have their votes counted” while similar voters in other counties don’t have to make that same effort is ‘a constitutional violation’ of the Equal Protection Clause,” Myers wrote.

“Overseas military and civilian voters followed the rules as they existed at the time of the election, but the retroactive change in voting procedure at issue here deprives them of their fundamental right to have their votes counted,” he wrote.

Griffin challenged a few hundred votes from people who said they had never lived in North Carolina but were connected to the state through their parents. The Supreme Court majority ruled that those votes should not be counted.

The state had counted votes from what Griffin called “never residents” for years without controversy. A reporter writing for The Assembly found that some of the “never residents” on Griffin’s list live in the state. Griffin did not want the state Board of Elections to give those voters a chance prove their residency before throwing out their votes.

Myers said the state has an interest in limiting the right to vote to bone fide residents, but it shouldn’t risk throwing out votes from people who live in the state.

“[T]he court finds that post-election ballot disqualification for individuals erroneously designated as Never Residents constitutes a substantial burden on the right
to vote,” Myers wrote.

Myers ruled that election rules cannot be changed after the fact, writing:

“[T]his case concerns whether the federal Constitution permits a state to alter the rules of an election after the fact and apply those changes retroactively to only a select group of voters, and in so doing treat those voters differently than other similarly situated individuals. This case is also about whether a state may redefine its class of eligible voters but offer no process to those who may have been misclassified as ineligible.

“To this court, the answer to each of those questions is ‘no.”

Myers ruling comes six months to the day after the Nov. 5, 2024 election. It also comes a few days before the state Board of Elections holds its first meeting with a new Republican majority.

Before this year, the governor appointed members to the Board of Elections, and the governor’s party held three seats on the five member board.

Last week, state Auditor Dave Boliek appointed the board with a Republican majority under a new law that strips governors of their appointment power. Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, is appealing.

The Democratic majority on the Board of Elections resisted throwing out votes as Griffin wanted.

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The state Board of Elections changed from a Democratic to a Republican majority on Thursday as state Auditor Dave Boliek exercised his new powers to appoint members to the five-member board.

The change to the board’s partisan makeup has implications for GOP Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin’s ongoing challenge to the results of the state Supreme Court race.

Griffin sued the elections board in his attempt to have votes thrown out as he seeks to unseat Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs. With a Democratic majority, the board had resisted that effort and fought in court against tossing votes. That could now change.

Boliek’s appointments come the day after the state Court of Appeals greenlighted a state law that moved elections board appointments and oversight from the governor to the new Republican state auditor. A three-member panel of Superior Court judges had ruled last week that the law was unconstitutional, but Wednesday’s ruling okayed a Republican request to stay that decision.

Gov. Josh Stein said in a statement Wednesday he would appeal to the state Supreme Court.

In a Wednesday X post, Stein said the Appeals Court’s quick decision was an attempt to steal the Supreme Court election.

“I fear that this decision is the latest step in the partisan effort to steal a seat on the Supreme Court,” Stein’s post said. “No emergency exists that can justify the Court of Appeals’ decision to interject itself at this point. The only plausible explanation is to permit the Republican State Auditor to appoint a new State Board of Elections that will try to overturn the results of the Supreme Court race.”

Federal District Judge Richard Myers has prohibited the Board of Elections from certifying the Supreme Court elections results, essentially declaring a winner, until he gives the okay.

Republican board appointees were nominated by the state Republican Party chair.

“We are pleased to have tremendous individuals serving on the State Board of Elections & thank everyone who expressed interest in these crucial positions,” state GOP Chairman Jason Simmons said on X. “These board members will ensure North Carolinians have fair, free, honest, and transparent administration of elections.”

Francis X. DeLuca of Wilmington

DeLuca is a former president of the Civitas Institute, a conservative policy organization. Under his leadership, Civitas sued the state Board of Elections over same-day registration in 2016. The federal lawsuit claimed the timing of address verification meant some invalid votes would be counted.

When he ran for Congress in 2019, DeLuca’s campaign website credited him with creating the website “Mapping the Left” and “opposing left-wing “Rev William Barber and the Moral Monday Movement.”

Civitas merged with the John Locke Foundation in 2021.

Former state Sen. Robert Rucho of Catawba County

Rucho was a long-time member of the Senate. As co-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, he was a key cheerleader for state tax cuts. He also led the chamber’s redistricting efforts, defending district lines from claims they were unconstitutional.

Stacy “Four” Eggers IV of Boone

Eggers is a current elections board member. He is the managing partner of the Eggers law firm and a former member of the Watauga County Board of Elections.

The Republican majority in the state legislature tried for years to weaken or eliminate governors’ control over the state Board of Elections, starting before former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, took office in 2017.

Boliek said in a press release he is ready to appoint Democrats when he receives nominations from the state Democratic Party chair.

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The day after the state Supreme Court put conditions on military and overseas votes counting in her race, Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs said she is eager to take the fight over those votes to federal court.

“I was elected to keep my seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court, and I am committed to fighting tirelessly to ensure that the will of North Carolina voters is respected,” Riggs told an audience at NC Central University’s law school on Saturday. “The eyes of the country are on the people of this state,” she said. “Because we are people of resilience, we are people of community, we’re going to show the country what it looks like to fight in tough times.”

Riggs was the final speaker at the “In Our Court” conference, sponsored by Common Cause NC, the American Constitution Society, Emancipate NC, Democracy NC, and about a half dozen other groups.

On Friday, a majority on the state Supreme Court decided that thousands of absentee ballots cast by members of the military and overseas voters should have included their photo IDs. The court said those voters would have 30 days to provide IDs after the state Board of Elections mails notices. People who don’t provide ID would have their votes in the state Supreme Court election thrown out.

The court majority decided a few hundred votes from people who live overseas and are connected to the state through their parents should be erased from the Supreme Court race total.

Riggs, the Democratic incumbent, leads Republican challenger Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes. Her lead in last November’s election has been confirmed in two recounts. In an effort to unseat her, Griffin sued the state Board of Elections to have more than 60,000 votes tossed out. Most of the voter challenges were based on Griffin’s claims of incomplete registrations.

A Supreme Court’s 4-2 majority reduced the votes in jeopardy to those cast by military and overseas absentee voters.

Riggs immediately asked federal District Judge Richard Myers for a preliminary injunction, basically to freeze action in case.

Myers on Saturday ordered the elections board to follow the state court’s instructions for notifying voters what they have to do to have their votes count, but not to certify the election until hearing more from the court.

The board is to tell Myers by Tuesday how many voters could be affected and which counties they’re in. Myers also set a schedule for written arguments.

The exact number of overseas and military voters affected is unclear. In her dissent, Justice Anita Earls wrote that at least 2,000 to 7,000 military and overseas voters could be affected. Those challenged military and overseas votes could be limited to Guilford County or could include overseas votes from a handful of other heavily Democratic counties Griffin added to his protest.

“They may be military members who have been serving on battlefronts in war zones,” Riggs said Saturday. “They are foreign service officers who are working to make this whole entire world a safer place to live,” she said.

The state’s military and overseas voting law is modeled after a federal law meant to encourage service people to vote. These voters were told they did not need to include photo ID with their ballots. Most use an electronic portal that does not allow voters to submit a photo. The majority on the Supreme Court said the state Board should have required overseas voters to supply photo ID.

While Riggs has focused her comments on military voters who may be disenfranchised, the challenged group also includes a high proportion of college-aged voters.

Griffin has included in his challenge overseas voters from Durham, Forsyth, Buncombe, and Guilford — all counties with significant student populations. The challenged overseas voters in these are five times more likely to be Democrats, said Gunther Peck, founder and co-director of the Student Voting Rights Lab at Duke and NC Central universities. The lab’s analysis found that challenged voters in this group are 4.6 times more likely to be between the ages of 18 and 25 than over the age of 65.

More than 260 Duke students living aboard and voted absentee had their votes challenged, Peck said.

Ann Webb, Common Cause NC policy director, said there are still questions the federal court can decide. A big one is whether it’s fair to single out military and overseas voters from a select group of counties.

The “gaping question” of which counties are supposed to be included needs to be resolved, Webb said, and may end up back in state court.

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The Republican judge who is seeking to throw out more than 60,000 votes in order to win a seat on the state Supreme Court dressed in a Confederate uniform while a member of a UNC-Chapel Hill fraternity, the Associated Press reported.

Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin was a member of Kappa Alpha, a fraternity that claims Confederate General Robert E. Lee as its spiritual founder, the AP reported. The wire service obtained a photograph of Griffin posing with other fraternity members at its “Old South” ball in 2001 and a 2000 photograph of Griffin and other fraternity members in front of a Confederate flag.

While Griffin told the AP that his attendance at the ball is not a reflection of who he is today, opponents of his efforts to throw out more than 60,000 votes in his Supreme Court race see a clear line between his past embrace of Confederate symbols and his voter challenges. Griffin is suing the state Board of Elections in an attempt to invalidate enough votes to unseat incumbent Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs. Riggs holds a 734-vote lead, which was affirmed in two recounts. Griffin claims the state elections board is counting illegal votes.

In a statement to the AP, Griffin said his attendance at the “Old South” ball was inappropriate.

“I attended a college fraternity event that, in hindsight, was inappropriate and does not reflect the person I am today,” Griffin said in his statement to the AP. “At that time, like many college students, I did not fully grasp such participation’s broader historical and social implications. Since then, I have grown, learned, and dedicated myself to values that promote unity, inclusivity, and respect for all people.”

Griffin was the fraternity chapter president in 2002.

In a 1998 News & Observer “scholars of the week” feature, Griffin, then a high school student, named Robert E. Lee one of three people on his “ideal guest list.”

The state Republican Party is supporting Griffin’s lawsuit. The party’s spokesman, Matt Mercer, did not respond to an email seeking comment, though in an exchange of insults with former Joe Biden spokesman Andrew Bates on social media, Mercer referred to “visiting the wayback machine.”

The state Court of Appeals heard arguments in Griffin’s case last week. The three-judge panel did not indicate when they would issue an opinion.

Opponents of Griffin’s attempt to erase more than 60,000 votes see a connection between his lawsuit and his past mimicry of Confederate traditions.

“These latest revelations about young Jefferson Griffin only reinforce the deeply problematic character flaws that we see in him now,” said Dawn Blagrove, executive director of the advocacy nonprofit Emancipate NC.

“It appears even as a child and a young man, he cared nothing about the feelings or constitutional rights of his fellow Americans. He was not committed to inclusion. He was not committed to diversity, and he was not committed to seeing all sides of the situation and having empathy,” she said in an interview.

“What we are seeing today about Jefferson Griffin from high school and from college has a straight line to the Jefferson Griffin that we see today who is challenging legal votes of 60,000 people,” she said. “And just like the Confederates lost the Civil War, Jefferson Griffin will lose this election.”

Rob Stephens, an organizer with the NC Poor People’s Campaign, said some would argue it doesn’t matter what someone did when he was 20. But here, “Griffin’s campaign is drenched in that same ideology and worldview,” Stephens said. “He’s living out this fantasy of plantation society where the elite are able to control the lives and the futures of everyone else in the racial caste system.”

Military and overseas absentee voters one of the categories of voters Griffin is challenging. But he’s only challenging those votes from a handful of heavily Democratic counties.

“He wants to go where there are Black voters,” Stephens said. Anyone who denies it “is delusional or is lying to us or lying to themselves,” he said.

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Felix Soto looked forward to voting in his first general election last year and made plans to cast a ballot from Costa Rica while on a UNC fellowship.

He decided to mail his ballot back to the Guilford County Board of Elections rather than submit it electronically.

He’d heard about heated conservative opposition to everything other than in-person voting, and wanted to avoid having his ballot being caught up in any conflicts. “This online portal seems like something they wouldn’t like,” he said.

Soto mailed a copy of his passport photo page with his ballot.

There was a problem with the first ballot, Soto said in an interview, so he had to submit another. He didn’t send the passport copy a second time, he said, because the elections office said it wasn’t necessary.

Soto is now on a list with more than 5,500 military and overseas absentee voters whose choices to fill a North Carolina Supreme Court seat may be erased. The Republican candidate for the seat, Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin, wants to throw out those votes and more than 60,000 others he says were illegally cast.

“I wanted to make doubly sure that my ballot wasn’t contested,” Soto said. “Then to still have it be contested is like a slap in the face. I tried so hard, and still…”

Griffin believes rejecting these ballots will lift him to victory over incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs, who leads by 734 votes.

After the Board of Elections dismissed his protest, Griffin asked the state Supreme Court to order the votes thrown out. Of the more than 60,000 he’s contesting, his lawyers suggested the justices look first to tossing military and civilian overseas absentee votes because photo ID is not included with those ballots. He has challenged overseas and military ballots only from four of the state’s most Democratic counties.

The Supreme Court told Griffin he had to take the normal route for an appeal and start at Wake Superior Court. A court hearing on Griffin’s lawsuit is scheduled to begin Friday.

Photo ID was not required of overseas and military absentee voters

The state Board of Elections’ rules do not require military voters and citizens living overseas to submit photo ID with their absentee ballots.

Of the multiple protests Griffin brought to the Board of Elections in December, the only protest the bipartisan board voted unanimously to dismiss was his protest over the issue of photo ID for military and overseas voters.

Griffin’s lawyers said in a recent brief filed in Wake County Superior Court that the state Board of Elections was wrong to exempt military and overseas voters from the photo ID requirement.

“In the Supreme Court contest, 5,509 such ballots were unlawfully cast,” the brief says. “Judge Griffin anticipates that, if these unlawful ballots are excluded, he will win the election.”

Most absentee and in-person voters must show an acceptable photo ID. If they don’t have one, they must fill out a form saying why.

The state Republican Party, which is supporting Griffin, summed up its argument in a Facebook post this week.

“We The People put Photo ID in the North Carolina Constitution. The General Assembly put Photo ID into law. No ID? No Vote. It’s That Simple.”

North Carolina’s state solicitor general, in a court brief, refuted the argument that the board was wrong to exempt absentee military and overseas voters. Requiring IDs probably would have violated the U.S. Constitution, the brief says.

Absentee voting by service members and citizens overseas is governed by a 2011 state law the legislature passed unanimously, the brief said. That law allows those voters to use special procedures to register to vote, request a ballot, and submit a ballot, the brief said. These procedures don’t require voters to submit ID with their absentee ballots.

The state law mirrors the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA.

“The Board concluded that imposing an identification requirement on voters covered by UOCAVA that is inconsistent with federal law would likely violate the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution,” the brief said.

Voters said it’s wrong to claim they should have compiled with a rule that didn’t exist.

“I think it’s pretty obvious that you can’t change the rules after the election,” said Aidan Hunt, who voted while traveling in Asia.

“You can’t tell people explicitly there’s no need to submit it, then penalize people for not submitting it,” he said in an interview this week.

Hunt used the electronic portal to vote. He doesn’t remember if there was even a way to send a copy of an ID.

“As best as I can recall, there’s no function to upload random stuff going through that portal. There wasn’t any place designated for an ID,” he said. “It’s not like an email message where you can just put whatever in there.”

Hunt submitted his own brief when Griffin filed his protests with the Board of Elections.

“The State Board of Elections explicitly represented to me at the time of submitting my Federal Post Card Application, at the time of returning my UOCAVA Ballot, and at all times through the election and canvass that submission of a photo ID or photocopy thereof was NOT required for UOCAVA voters. Upon information and belief, the same is true for all affected Party Voters,” he wrote.

He said in the interview that he knew the Board of Elections was going to hear from a lot of lawyers, and he wanted them to hear from a voter.

“I just wanted to make a point that citizens are reading this and are watching what the government’s doing and they will be held accountable,” Hunt said. “I wanted a citizen’s name on the record.”

He told them: “Let us make no mistake that discarding the ballots of citizens eligible to vote is the death penalty for democracy. Unlike a protest of disqualified voters, this protest aims to destroy the voices of North Carolinians unequivocally eligible to vote by law due to an alleged requirement that could not have been known to them at the time of voting.”

Some overseas voters didn’t receive required notices

In the months since Griffin filed his protests, some who voted in person and whose ballots Griffin is challenging said they never received the postcards the state GOP was required to send notifying them of the potential challenges. The same is true of overseas voters.

Soto said he didn’t know until his mother plugged his name into an online search tool.

Kathryn Spann, who moved to Spain last year from Durham, didn’t know her vote was being challenged until a reporter contacted her this week. Spann is a former lawyer turned cheesemaker who co-owned Prodigal Farm in Durham.

In an interview, Spann said she’s been following Griffin’s case, but never received an NC GOP postcard. Griffin is challenging her husband’s ballot too.

Spann’s sister is living in the Durham house where Spann lived before moving to Spain. No postcard arrived at that address. And she never received any notice in Spain.

“The idea that after the fact and selectively, not equally across the state, a sitting judge would choose to attack the established electoral system is repugnant,” she said.

“Had I received basic and timely notice, I feel that I could have plugged into the attorneys filing the amicus brief or working with Democrats Abroad.”

In 2008, Spann ran in a down-ballot race for Durham County Soil and Water District Supervisor.

“I’ve always been, perhaps not surprisingly, focused on doing research on all races, not just the top of the ticket,” she said.

In October, she wrote on Facebook about her experience submitting an online ballot. She shared a link for overseas voter registration and encouraged people to vote the entire ballot.

“Our democracy depends on all of us informing ourselves on races up and down the ballot,” she wrote.

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When and how North Carolina voters cast their ballots last year is a key to distinguishing which votes in the race for a state Supreme Court seat are in danger of being thrown out.

Republican Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin is seeking to toss out more than 60,000 votes in the race. He trails Democratic incumbent Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes.

Most of the votes Griffin wants tossed were cast by people he argues were not legally registered because, he claims, they did not provide required ID numbers on their registration applications. Both the state Supreme Court and the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals are hearing the case at this point.

All the voters Griffin is challenging cast ballots during the early voting period or voted absentee. Those ballots can be traced to individual voters. A Griffin court brief says he believes he can win if the votes he is contesting are erased.

In addition to the voters whose registration he questions, he also wants to delete the votes of overseas voters who did not provide photo ID with their ballots, and those of overseas voters who have never lived in North Carolina but whose parents lived in the state.

None of the voters he’s challenged voted in person on Election Day. Ballots cast by people who vote on Election Day cannot be tracked back to individuals.

The League of Women Voters of North Carolina put a focus on how Griffin treats voters differently depending on when they voted in a “friend of the court” brief it filed while U.S. District Judge Richard Myers II had the case and before he sent it back to state court.

The Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires “that when making determinations about the validity of its citizens’ ballots, the government cannot apply one set of rules to, say early in-person and absentee voters and a different set of rules to similarly situated voters who cast their ballots on election day,” the brief said.

Anne Tindall, one of the lawyers with Protect Democracy who represented the League and individual voters, said in an interview that if government treats people differently, it has to have a reason.

“The Equal Protection clause, when it comes to something like voting, holds the government to a higher standard than what the requested relief would require,” she said.

In his order sending the case back to state court, Myers said he considered the League’s brief, but he did not address the equal protection issue.

The North Carolina constitution also has an Equal Protection clause, said Jeff Loperfido, chief counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

Protections under the state Equal Protection clause are stronger, he said.

“Under our Equal Protection clause, the constitutional protections for individuals should be more protective and more expansive.”

Craig Schauer, a lawyer representing Griffin, did not reply to a Jan. 3 email or Jan. 6 phone call. He did, however, respond to a question about equal protection when the State Board of Elections debated Griffin’s voter protests on Dec. 11.

Board member Siobhan Millen, a Democrat, asked Schauer about counting the votes of some people with missing information, but not others.

“Wouldn’t the people whose votes are thrown out have an equal protection claim based on different treatment depending on which method of voting they chose?” she asked.

Schauer responded: “Equal protection requires that the two groups be similarly situated. So, I believe there could be a basis of distinguishing the two groups on the fact that some elected to vote provisionally or by absentee ballot and others elected to vote in person. I will say that is a question I haven’t contemplated before and it is a good question for the board to consider.”

In a brief filed Tuesday in the state Supreme Court case, Griffin’s lawyers seem to deemphasize his protest of early, in-person voters.

Griffin’s lawyers suggest the Supreme Court consider the protests in phases, starting with overseas absentee ballots that arrived without photo ID. A state Board of Elections rule exempts overseas voters from the photo ID requirement, but Griffin says the Board was wrong to adopt such a rule.

If Griffin is ahead of Riggs after those overseas votes are erased, the Supreme Court wouldn’t have to make a decision on to the other categories, the brief says.

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While all eyes were on Judge Jefferson Griffin’s attempt to discard ballots in a case that’s now with the state Supreme Court, there’s a parallel action, with a hearing today, in Wake Superior Court in a lawsuit brought by the Republican Party.

Griffin, a Republican Appeals Court judge, is seeking to throw out more than 60,000 votes cast in the fall election on the belief that doing so will allow him to unseat incumbent Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs. Riggs leads by 734 votes.

While Griffin wants votes subtracted only in his race, a separate Republican lawsuit seeks to potentially throw out tens of thousands of votes cast in all statewide races. At this point, all statewide election results, except the result in Supreme Court race, have been certified and the winners have taken office. The Democratic National Committee will go to court to formally oppose the GOP suit.

Most of the ballots Griffin is seeking to discount were cast by people he claims did not provide driver’s license numbers or a partial Social Security number on their registration applications. He argues those voters are not legally registered, though many have been registered and voting for decades.

State law does not require voters to have a driver’s license number or Social Security number.

In a separate lawsuit, the Republican National Committee, the state Republican Party, the Wake County Republican Party and two voters want a Superior Court judge to require the state Board of Elections to go through the more than 60,000 ballots to determine whether the voters were validly registered and deduct the votes of those who weren’t, or have elections officials go back to voters to collect the government digits under a deadline. Republicans propose that voters whose information is not collected would have their votes discarded for all elections for state offices.

The lawsuit blames the state Board of Elections for violating state law by not collecting the information, and asks for a preliminary injunction. The state Supreme Court ordered a temporary stay in Griffin’s case earlier this week.

The Democratic National Committee will ask to intervene in the GOP lawsuit to oppose it.

The election is over and all the elections are certified or are already being litigated over the exact same claims, the DNC brief says.

“Plaintiffs’ lawsuit runs counter to the generalities they purport to espouse. They claim they are combating “voter fraud,” yet they attempt to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters who have lawfully registered and cast their ballots for decades,” the brief says.

“They claim they are promoting “election integrity,” but their lawsuit undermines voters’ ability to trust that their voter registrations are valid and their votes will be counted. The motion should be denied and the status quo maintained pending trial on the merits.”

At Griffin’s request, the state Supreme Court this week blocked certification of Riggs’ election while it considers his case. Republicans hold a 5-2 majority on the court. Four Republican justices decided to hear the case, while one Republican and one Democrat dissented. Riggs has recused herself.

The state Board of Elections dismissed Griffin’s protests last month.

Last year, the state GOP and the Republican National Committee sued to have 225,000 voters purged from the registration rolls over the issue of partial voter registration applications. A federal judge partially dismissed the suit.

Some voters have said they put partial Social Security numbers on their applications, but through data mismatches, the numbers were not attached to their voter files.

NC Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. NC Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Rob Schofield for questions: info@ncnewsline.com.

At the request of GOP Judge Jefferson Griffin, Republicans on the state Supreme Court have prohibited the state Board of Elections from certifying Democratic Justice Allison Riggs’ election.

Riggs, the incumbent, leads Griffin by 734 votes in the election for a seat on the state’s highest court.

Griffin, an Appeals Court judge, wants to discount more than 60,000 votes on the belief that throwing them out will allow him to win.

After the state Board of Elections dismissed his election protests last month, Griffin asked the Supreme Court, where Republicans hold a 5-2 majority, to step in.

The state Board had the case transferred to federal court, but on Monday, U.S. District Judge Richard Myers II sent it back to state court.

Tuesday’s order for a temporary stay said the state Supreme Court received notice that the state Board plans to appeal Myers’ decision, but “in the absence of a stay from federal court, this matter should be addressed expeditiously because it concerns certification of an election.”

Democratic Justice Anita Earls dissented, writing that the standards for a temporary stay have not been met.

Riggs has recused herself from participation in the case.

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.

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