To steal an election

Transcript:

I’m Thomas Mills for PoliticsNC. Today is Friday, April 4, 2025 and democracy is slipping away in North Carolina.

Today, a three-judge panel ruled along partisan lines to allow Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin disqualify more than 65,000 votes. Griffin lost the election to justice Allison Riggs by about 730 votes.

The ruling gives voters 15 days to cure their ballots, but it would be very difficult to address 65,000 individual ballots.

The ballots in question include more than 5,000 military ballots cast by service members stationed overseas. The legislature said they didn’t need to have a photo identification, but the Court of Appeals disagreed–five months after they cast those ballots.

Another 60,000 voters had voter registration forms with incomplete identification, even though they all showed photo voter IDs at the time they voted.

This ruling is a travesty for democracy. Griffin and the Republican Party cherry-picked the ballots they challenged. If the same standard was applied to all voters, then Griffin would almost certainly have lost the election. Instead, the court is only considering the voters that Griffin singled out. The contested ballots are overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning constituencies.

Never again will a North Carolina voter be able to vote in an election and be sure that his vote will be counted. Creating this level of uncertainty around elections undermines our democracy.

The decision doesn’t only undermine faith in our elections, it undermines the credibility of the court. Legal experts from both parties voiced their opposition to the case. It should never have been heard in the first case.

Justice Riggs will appeal the decision to the State Supreme Court. With Riggs recusing herself from the case, six justices will vote to decide the case. A split decision will leave today’s ruling intact.

I only hope that four of those Justices have enough respect for the voters and the integrity of the court to rule against Griffin. Right now, I’m not optimistic.

I’ll be writing more about this decision and this case in the next few days, but these are my initial thoughts.

I’m Thomas Mills signing off for PoliticsNC.