Democratic incumbent, and the apparent winner of the North Carolina Supreme Court race, filed a brief with the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday, laying out her argument for why a legal battle on the certification of the November race should remain in federal court.
The ongoing legal battle, which involves North Carolina state appeals court judge and Republican state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin attempting to overturn the results of the election by tossing out 60,000 ballots, has bounced around between courts, but currently resides in the state Supreme Court — the very court Griffin is vying to sit on. Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs won the election in November by a little over 700 votes. Her victory has been confirmed by two recounts.
“Judge Griffin is jeopardizing voters’ fundamental rights under federal law and the United States Constitution,” Embry Owen, spokesperson for the Riggs campaign, said in a statement shared with TPM on Wednesday. “Rather than respecting the will of his fellow North Carolinians, he is asking the courts to throw out the ballots of active duty members of the military, local elected officials, and individuals who have voted for decades without issue.”
Griffin took the case to the state Supreme Court after the North Carolina Board of Elections rejected his protest of 60,000 ballots. The Board of Elections then countered by removing the case to federal court. But, earlier this month, a federal judge remanded the case back to the state Supreme Court, where it currently remains. The State Board of Elections and Riggs appealed this decision and are currently trying to get it moved back to federal court.
“This case belongs in federal court, because federal law stands between Judge Griffin and the mass disenfranchisement he seeks,” counsel for Riggs argued in the Wednesday court filing. “Judge Griffin is well aware of those federal obstacles; he filed this action directly in the N.C. Supreme Court on the mistaken belief that, by skipping the North Carolina trial and intermediate appellate courts, he could thwart federal jurisdiction.”
“This Court should reverse the district court’s refusal to provide a federal forum for the federal claims and defenses at issue,” the brief further asserts. “The Court should also hold, in light of the federal interests at stake and need for prompt resolution of this election dispute, that Judge Griffin is unlikely to prevail in his effort to overturn the election results.”
Alongside Rigg’s brief, the North Carolina Democratic party also filed a brief with the court on Wednesday, in support of Riggs’ arguments. “The district court erred when it remanded these consolidated cases to state court…” the brief states.
At the moment, the appeal is still pending and the case remains unsettled. The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is set to hear oral arguments on January 27.
Earlier this week too, Griffin filed a legal brief with the state Supreme Court, laying out his arguments for why the court should toss out ballots and overturn the results of the election. In his argument, he says the court should first invalidate 5,509 overseas ballots who he says failed to show photo identification, prior to considering the rest of the 60,000 ballots he is attempting to throw out.
The thinking is if the 5,509 protests are accepted, the other 60,000 might not even need to be considered at all, since the first group, according to Griffin, might alone be enough to give Griffin the lead he needs to steal the lead from Riggs.
Voting rights experts who spoke with TPM, explained Griffin’s insistence on giving the court a new way to sequence election protests, is simply another method to continue to disenfranchise thousands of votes in a way that appears vaguely less egregious than tossing out 60,000 votes all at once. Griffin has not yet presented any proof of voter fraud and his arguments have only been speculative about verification of voter identities in the state.
