Bet you thought the election was over. Not for Republicans in North Carolina. | Opinion
It really shouldn't surprise anybody that Republicans are still challenging election results. But the GOP in North Carolina is kind of known for this.
Voting may have finished months ago, but Republicans are still trying to change the outcome of one North Carolina election. The plan? Throw out more than 60,000 ballots in a race that will determine the balance of the state’s Supreme Court.
Democratic Justice Allison Riggs won back her seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million. Instead of accepting this defeat gracefully, Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin filed multiple protests with the State Board of Elections, alleging that thousands of people voted when they weren’t supposed to.
Now, the North Carolina Supreme Court – a judicial body controlled by Republicans – has blocked the state from certifying the race results. A similar case is also going through a federal appeals court.
Of course, there is no evidence of voter fraud in the 2024 election in North Carolina or elsewhere. Republicans are making a blatant grab for power. It’s nothing new for North Carolina, but it’s still despicable.
Republicans are trying everything they can to overturn votes
Riggs was trailing on election night but ultimately won once provisional and absentee ballots were counted. Two recounts failed to change the election outcome; Griffin, a justice on the state Court of Appeals, lost.
The primary argument Griffin is making is that those without a listed Social Security number or driver’s license are violating a 2004 state law that requires that data on registration applications. There are a variety of reasons people don’t have these numbers on record, ranging from when they registered to clerical errors.
Griffin is also arguing that votes from people who are still serving felony sentences or had their voter registrations denied were counted by local elections officials.
Despite Griffin’s claims, failing to provide a Social Security number or driver’s license number does not disqualify a voter. Also, North Carolinians are required to show identification when they go to the polls – meaning that many of the challenged ballots were filled out by people who already had to prove their legitimacy.
In an analysis of the 60,000 contested ballots, the News & Observer found that Black voters were twice as likely to have their votes challenged as white voters. Additionally, most of the challenges are among voters ages 18-25.
North Carolina Republicans know this move very well
While this sounds like a move straight out of President-elect Donald Trump’s playbook, North Carolina Republicans have tried to subvert democracy in the past.
This is the same state that was accused of targeting Black voters "with almost surgical precision" when the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the state’s first voter ID law in 2016. It’s the same state that is constantly in legal battles over its congressional maps, which gave Republicans a 10-4 advantage in the 2024 House races.
Contesting an election has also been part of the North Carolina Republican playbook for years.
In 2016, when Gov. Pat McCrory lost his reelection bid to Democratic winner Roy Cooper, he refused to concede for a month while making baseless claims about voter fraud. The saga ended once the former governor exhausted his legal avenues, although he even cast doubt on voter integrity in his concession video.
Around the time this happened, political science professor Andrew Reynolds argued in the News & Observer that gerrymandering and a Republican supermajority in the state at the time meant that North Carolina could no longer be classified as a democracy.
Do Republicans even care what voters want?
A 734-vote difference is an incredibly thin margin, but this is a state of thin margins. In 2018, the 9th Congressional District race had a difference of 905 votes. Some local races have been decided by five votes or less, even going to a coin toss to determine the winner.
This Supreme Court race is decided; Republicans don’t want to cede any power to Democrats.
They demonstrated as much when they took power away from positions that went Democratic in the election. Now, they want to ensure that the Supreme Court remains Republican-controlled until at least 2030. That's regardless, it would appear, of what voters might want.
And by taking it to the courts, the state government will continue to spend tax dollars on a legal challenge most voters don't want. The fact that the North Carolina Supreme Court is even hearing this argument is an embarrassment to the state.
If Griffin is successful in his protests, it will set a bad precedent in North Carolina and the country. The solution is simple: Pick the candidate who got the most votes.
Follow Paste BN columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter: @sara__pequeno