A federal judge has denied Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin’s request for a temporary restraining order in a dispute over more than 60,000 ballots cast in North Carolina’s state Supreme Court election. Griffin had sought the order to block the State Board of Elections from certifying Democrat Allison Riggs as the race’s winner.
“A motion for temporary restraining may only issue if the movant makes a clear showing of immediate injury,” US Chief District Judge Richard Myers wrote Friday.
The state elections board indicated “that no election certification will occur until January 3, 2025, or more likely January 6,” Myers wrote. Griffin is the plaintiff and the elections board is the defendant in the case.
“With notice of Defendants’ position, Plaintiff’s counsel responds in briefing that Defendants are ‘poised to certify the election results in a matter of days.’ The statements of counsel in briefing are not ‘specific facts in an affidavit or verified complaint,’ and the court finds that Plaintiff has failed to make a clear showing that he will suffer immediate injury before Defendant can be heard in opposition,” Myers explained.
Riggs, an appointed Democrat incumbent, leads Griffin by 734 votes in a race that has not yet been certified. She filed paperwork Thursday to intervene in the federal case.
Griffin filed a complaint Wednesday urging the state Supreme Court to block the state elections board from counting “unlawful” ballots in the race. The elections board responded the following morning by removing the case to Myers’ federal courtroom.
“Justice Riggs won her 2024 general election contest against Judge Jefferson Griffin,” Riggs’ lawyers wrote Thursday. “Now, six weeks after more than 5.5 million North Carolinians cast their votes and elected both Democrats and Republicans to statewide offices, Judge Griffin seeks to throw out over 66,000 votes — more than one out of every hundred votes cast in North Carolina — in violation of federal and North Carolina law.”
“As Judge Griffin says in his Petition for Writ of Prohibition, he ‘anticipates’ that if these ‘ballots are excluded, then he will have won the contest.’ Necessarily, if Judge Griffin could win the election by virtue of his lawsuit, then this action has the potential to overturn the outcome of the election in which Justice Riggs won,” Riggs’ court filing continued.
“Justice Riggs has a vital interest in the outcome of this lawsuit but was not named as a party to it,” her lawyers wrote. Intervention in the federal case will allow Riggs “to protect her interests in having her election contest evaluated properly in accordance with federal and North Carolina law and in recognition of the more than 2.7 million voters who elected her to stay on our Supreme Court.”
Myers already oversees a lawsuit the North Carolina Democratic Party filed on Dec. 6 dealing with the same ballot challenges Griffin addresses in his complaint. Griffin intervened as a defendant in that case.
Griffin asked North Carolina’s highest court Wednesday to issue an order blocking state elections officials “from counting unlawful ballots” from the recent election.
A board spokesman responded to Griffin’s latest complaint Wednesday by pointing to the 43-page order issued on Dec. 11 responding to Griffin’s challenges.
Griffin sought a temporary stay “before Monday” to give the state Supreme Court time to consider his request for a writ of prohibition. Griffin’s lawyers filed a 3,992-page document Wednesday afternoon detailing his request.
“Judge Griffin asks the Court to exercise its power — as granted by the North Carolina Constitution — to supervise inferior tribunals, such as the State Board,” his lawyers wrote. “Judge Griffin asks the Court to issue a writ of prohibition that prohibits the State Board from counting ballots cast in violation of North Carolina’s statutes and constitution. … [T]he State Board has continued to issue rulings and administer our elections in violation of North Carolina law, and the Board’s lawlessness cannot be allowed to continue.”
“The State Board is an administrative agency that has knowingly broken the law and refused to do anything about it,” Griffin’s lawyers argued. “Indeed, the Board has been breaking our election laws for decades. This lawlessness was brought to the Board’s attention back in 2023, before the 2024 general election, but the Board refused to correct its errors.”
“Now those chickens have come home to roost. In the 2024 general election, the Board’s errors changed the outcome of the election for the open seat on this Court. When those errors were raised again in valid election protests, the Board then claimed that it was too late to fix its law-breaking,” the court filing continued.
Griffin’s court filing highlighted three categories of election protests: voters who registered without providing a driver’s license number or last four digits of a Social Security number, voters who never have lived in North Carolina, and overseas voters who did not provide photo identification.
“In response to these protests, the State Board and the opposing candidate, Justice Allison Riggs, have claimed that Judge Griffin is seeking a retroactive change in the election laws. That flatly mischaracterizes the timeline,” the court filing continued. “Our registration statutes required drivers license or social security numbers back in 2004. Our state constitution has imposed a residency requirement since 1776. And photo identification has been required for absentee voting since at least 2018. The laws that should have governed this election were, therefore, established long before this election. The State Board simply chose to break the law.”
The state elections board scheduled a meeting Friday to address unresolved protests from Griffin and three Republican legislative candidates on issues other than the ones spelled out in Griffin’s legal filing Wednesday. The state board tasked county elections boards with addressing protests involving possible voting by felons, votes cast by people who died before Election Day, and votes cast by people who had been removed from the voting rolls.
In a Dec. 11 meeting, the state board rejected the three groups of protests Griffin mentioned in this week’s complaint. The Democrat-majority board voted 3-2 to reject protests based on incomplete voter registration data and nonresident voters. The board voted unanimously to reject protests involving overseas voters who did not provide photo ID.
