Why Hasn’t North Carolina Called the Supreme Court Race Yet?

Leftist lawyers are descending on North Carolina to try to ensure state Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs remains on the bench in the last uncalled race of 2024. Her opponent, Republican state Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin, is challenging ballots cast by voters who provided incomplete or fraudulent voter registrations. He is also challenging thousands of overseas votes that did not include photo identification. 

The overseas votes alone outnumber the margin between Riggs and Griffin nearly tenfold.

Many of these out-of-state legal firms are working closely with Democratic operative Marc Elias’ law firm, the Elias Law Group. Elias—one of the Democratic Party’s top election lawyers—received $5 million from George Soros in 2016 to fight against election integrity measures like requiring photo ID. 

On Election Day, Griffin led Riggs by 10,000 votes. After weeks of counting and curing ballots, Riggs’ lead shrunk to just over 700 votes. The gap now stands at 734 votes. 

State Senate Leader Phil Berger Sr. (R) called it “another episode of count until someone you want to win, wins.”

On Jan. 7, the state Supreme Court blocked the state Board of Elections from certifying the election while the case works its way through state and federal appeals courts.

Griffin’s lawsuit challenges over 65,000 voters. The bulk allegedly didn’t provide the final four digits of their Social Security Number or their driver’s license number, as the Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires.

NC Newsline interviewed one voter, whose vote the Republican Party challenged for missing critical ballot information. The voter said he couldn’t remember who he voted for: “There were so many names on that ballot it would make your head spin.” Voters who guess at names they’ve never heard of and then forget who they marked are unlikely to be responsible enough to submit the required ID.

An audit by the state Board of Elections found 29,972 of the voters Griffin challenged did, in fact, provide identification numbers, and another 1,196 lacked either form of identification and were issued a unique number for voting purposes.

Assuming the audit was thorough, the remaining 30,859 questionable votes still presents a problem, especially in a race separated by just 0.02 percent.

Griffin’s opponents contend that many of these voters who lack ID numbers registered before 2002 when HAVA began requiring voters to provide either of these numbers on their voter registration forms, while others may have slipped through the cracks through clerical errors. According to HAVA, those voters should have cast provisional ballots. County officials would have then attempted to verify their identity after the election. 

If county clerks had been doing their jobs over the years, those who lacked ID numbers on their registration forms would have been marked long ago and given a chance to fix the problem. But until 2024, North Carolina voter registration forms didn’t even make it clear either of these numbers were required—meaning for over 20 years, people undoubtedly left that part of the form blank thinking it was optional. 

The old NC Voter Registration Application didn’t specify that this information is required.

The application now shows this information is required.

Griffin’s opponents complain it would be a lot of trouble for county officials to go through the challenged registration forms. But the Board of Elections has procrastinated on this problem before by throwing out similar Republican challenges prior to the 2024 general election. Putting in the work now will prevent the need for similar challenges in the future.

To Count or Not to Count Overseas Votes

Griffin is also challenging over 5,500 overseas ballots for their lack of photo identification, which North Carolina law requires for in-person and absentee voters. 

Griffin’s legal team has also identified 500 overseas voters who’ve never even lived in North Carolina, and 60 percent of counties still haven’t provided their numbers. When the total number of never-resided voters is tallied, it’s almost certain to vastly exceed Riggs’ alleged margin of victory.

As Restoration News previously revealed, it wouldn’t be that hard for a non-citizen who’s never set foot on American soil to register to vote using a Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) form. North Carolina gives registrants the option to select ‘None’ if they claim they lack either an American driver’s license or Social Security Number. In fact, in 2020, federally indicted Iranian hackers uploaded a video of them doing just that.

North Carolina has roughly 14,500 registered overseas voters. Non-military overseas Americans overwhelmingly vote Democrat compared with their military counterparts. Among non-military overseas voters from North Carolina, 41 percent are registered Democrats, while only 11 percent are registered Republican. Among military personnel, 22 percent are registered Democrats, and 42 percent Republican.

Non-military voters constitute 59 percent of registered overseas North Carolinians but constituted 66 percent of overseas North Carolinians who cast a ballot in 2024. This tilted overseas votes in favor of registered Democrats over Republicans, 35 percent to 21 percent.

Among the non-military overseas votes cast, the difference between registered Democrats and Republicans is 789 votes, greater than the votes that separate Griffin and Riggs overall.

Maybe the 7 percent discrepancy between military and non-military registered North Carolinians overseas means overseas civilians vote at a higher rate than military personnel, but the lack of photo ID—which every overseas American must possess to travel abroad—raises relevant questions about the integrity of some UOCAVA votes.

But even if all these overseas votes were legitimately cast, Article VI, Section 2.1 clearly suggests non-residents can’t vote in state elections at all in North Carolina, something UOCAVA does not require. If the state Supreme Court interprets this section to discount all overseas votes, Griffin is almost guaranteed to emerge the winner.

(READ MORE: North Carolina Legislature Passes Needed Election Reforms Over the Howls of the Far Left)