The Democratic nominee, and the clear winner of the North Carolina Supreme Court race, filed a brief with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday, laying out her argument for why the legal fight over certification of the November race should remain in federal court. .
The ongoing legal battle, involving North Carolina Court of Appeals judge and Republican state Supreme Court nominee Jefferson Griffin who is trying to overturn the election results by throwing out 60,000 ballots, has bounced around the courts, but currently resides in the state Supreme Court — the very stadium in which Griffin competes to sit on it. Incumbent Democratic Judge Allison Riggs won the November election by just over 700 votes. Her victory is confirmed by two accounts.
“Judge Griffin is jeopardizing the fundamental rights of voters under federal law and the United States Constitution,” Embry Owen, a spokesman for the Riggs campaign, said in a statement shared with TPM on Wednesday. “Instead of respecting the will of his fellow North Carolinians, he is asking the courts to overturn the votes 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 State Board of Elections rejected his protest of 60,000 ballots. The Board of Elections then responded by referring the case to federal court. But earlier this month, a federal judge sent the case back to the state Supreme Court, where it remains. The state Board of Elections and Riggs have appealed that decision and are currently trying to get it back in federal court.
“This case belongs in federal court, because federal law stands between Judge Griffin and the mass disenfranchisement he seeks,” Riggs’ attorney said in the court filing Wednesday. “Judge Griffin is well aware of those federal hurdles; He brought this action directly in the N.C. Supreme Court based on the mistaken belief that by bypassing North Carolina’s trial and intermediate appellate courts, he could frustrate federal jurisdiction.
The brief also asserts that “this court should reverse the district court’s refusal to provide a federal forum for the federal claims and defenses at issue.” “The Court must also find, in light of the federal interests at stake and the need for a prompt resolution of this election dispute, that Judge Griffin is unlikely to prevail in his efforts to overturn the election results.”
Along with Brief Reg, North Carolina Democratic Party He also submitted a memorandum to the court on Wednesday to support Riggs’ arguments. “The district court erred when it remanded these consolidated cases to state court…” the summary stated.
Currently, the appeal is pending and the case remains unsettled. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear oral arguments on January 27.
Also earlier this week, Griffin filed a legal brief with the state Supreme Court, outlining his arguments for why the court should throw out ballots and overturn the election results. In his argument, he says the court should first invalidate the 5,509 overseas ballots that he says failed to show photo ID, before considering the rest of the 60,000 ballots he is trying to exclude.
The thinking is that if 5,509 protests are accepted, the other 60,000 may not even need to be taken into account at all, since the first group, according to Griffin, alone may be enough to give Griffin the lead he needs to steal the lead from Riggs.
Voting rights experts who spoke with TPM explained that Griffin’s insistence that the court give the court a new way to sequence election protests is just another way to continue to disenfranchise thousands of votes in a way that seems vaguely less egregious than throwing out 60,000 votes at once. . Griffin has so far provided no evidence of voter fraud and his arguments have been mere speculation about verifying voter identities in the state.