The Race is (Finally) Over: Griffin Conceded.
Judge Jefferson Griffin conceded his North Carolina Supreme Court election to incumbent justice Allison Riggs, ending a six-month election protest. Here’s why he did so and what the drawbacks are.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Jefferson Griffin’s (partially) successful election protest in North Carolina state courts and the initial response of the federal court system. Just a few days ago, his protest became moot—Griffin conceded his supreme court contest to Allison Riggs, leaving her the winner of the statewide race by 734 votes.
His concession came after a May 5th federal district court ruling that held the State Board must certify his election’s original canvass results. The judge presiding over the case said the state court rulings in Griffin v. North Carolina Board of Elections—which subjected some of 65,000 voters that Griffin challenged to ballot curing and declared others retroactively ineligible—would have resulted in federal equal protection and due process violations (something we covered in our last post).
The ballot curing scheme that state courts said was necessary never actually went into effect: a federal appeals court issued an injunction that prevented the State Board from implementing it. But even if it went into effect, Griffin had an increasingly narrow path to victory. Under the state court of appeals’ initial plan, all 65,000 voters needed to follow a fast-paced curing process if they wanted their votes counted. The state Supreme Court exempted most of those voters a week later. And the State Board, when announcing their final ballot curing plan, whittled the list of affected voters down even further: in its April 15th plan, the State Board named only 1,675 voters who were subject to ballot curing. Considering the State Board’s other measures that made curing less onerous, it was already unlikely that Griffin could pull off a victory. Generous national news coverage made it all but impossible. Though a Griffin victory was largely hypothetical, the support of his protest and ballot-curing had the real effect of undermining North Carolina elections.
Incumbent state supreme court justice Allison Riggs posted a statement on social media following Griffin’s concession that thanked her supporters and lamented the time it took to finalize her election. As Riggs said in her acknowledgment of victory, the race also hurt the democracy in her state. Indeed, the unprecedented nature of Griffin’s election protests and its novel arguments brought to the forefront of a close—yet already decided—race unsubstantiated claims of mass election fraud. And state courts adamantly ruled in favor of his protest and were willing to disenfranchise qualified North Carolina voters in the process.
Although Riggs is now the official winner of North Carolina’s 2024 state supreme court election, Judge Jefferson Griffin noted in his concession that the state courts’ decisions in his favor were significant in “securing” his state’s elections. He pointed specifically to the courts requiring identification with all absentee ballots and using a stricter interpretation of residency for the state’s voters. It’s uncertain that these new measures will actually make election fraud less likely. They probably won’t. What is certain, however, is that North Carolina’s election procedures are now no longer on par with most other states. If the state courts’ holdings stay in place, North Carolina will be the only state in the country that requires overseas absentee voters to return a copy of photo ID and one of only a few states that bans its citizens who have never lived in the United States (what Griffin called “Never Residents”) from voting in state elections.
The end of Griffin’s election challenge is a victory for democracy, albeit a limited one.
Though it finally reached the right outcome, it took a drawn-out legal battle and federal intervention to end up there. And, in the process of doing it, judges made the right to vote less accessible in North Carolina.