North Carolina Democrat Must Be Certified as Winner, Judge Rules

Republican efforts to toss overseas votes and flip a North Carolina Supreme Court seat were rejected by a federal judge Monday, ordering the state board of elections to certify the race for incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs.

“You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done,” said Judge Richard E. Myers, a Donald Trump appointee, in a 68-page ruling reversing a Republican-controlled North Carolina Appeals Court decision sought by a Republican contender for the state’s high court to exclude some overseas votes.

If the ruling stands, Riggs will keep her seat, rebuffing a half-year challenge to her narrow victory and tamping down on a method of challenging races by segregating segments of votes that favor one political party and challenging them after election results are in.

“This consolidated action concerns an attempt to change the rules of the game after it had been played,” Myers said. “The court cannot countenance that strategy.”

Griffin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Six-Month Battle

Hours of oral arguments, thousands of pages of legal briefing, protests, and letter-writing campaigns ensued as Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin (R) sought to exclude more than 65,000 votes cast in the election he lost to Riggs by less than 800 votes.

Griffin claimed that 60,000 votes from people without driver’s license or Social Security numbers in their registration forms should be excluded from the tally. He also argued thousands of military and overseas votes without attached voter IDs shouldn’t be counted.

The GOP-controlled North Carolina Supreme Court rejected his argument over the voter registrations in April, but kept alive the issue of the military and overseas voters—enough that excluding them might tip the race to Griffin. The high court gave some voters an option to “cure” their ballots, creating questions around the chaos that could ensue with efforts to notify and help thousands of voters months after an election took place.

Court watchers said the race brought post-election attacks to the court chambers, raising questions about how judges would handle litigation that could disenfranchise thousands of voters. While other politicians have brought post-election suits, like Donald Trump challenging more than 200,000 votes from liberal areas of Wisconsin in the 2020 presidential race, this was a first for state high courts.

Myers’ opinion directly rebuffed this kind of litigation, holding that “retroactive invalidation” of absentee ballot cast by overseas voters, the state’s ad hoc cure process, and a lack of opportunity for voters to contest their inclusion in these piles of excluded ballots all violated federal due process rights and “represents an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.”

“Today, we won. I’m proud to continue upholding the Constitution and the rule of law as North Carolina’s Supreme Court Justice,” Riggs said in a statement.

Eye Toward Congress

The North Carolina Supreme Court remains firmly in Republicans’ hands, with conservatives holding five of the seven seats. With eight-year terms, the GOP will keep control of the bench through at least the beginning of 2029.

However, Riggs’ victory for an eight-year term means she’ll be seated through the 2030 Census when the battleground state will redraw lines for congressional seats—a conflict that routinely makes it to the state high court. At least four justices’ seats will be up for re-election before legislators get the Census data they need to redraw the lines.

North Carolina currently sends 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats to Congress. A flip of the court could give Democrats the ability to reinstate partisan gerrymandering claims—something the GOP justices recently jettisoned—re-empowering liberal groups power in challenges to Republican-drawn district lines.

The case is Griffin v. North Carolina State Bd. of Elections, E.D.N.C., No. 5:24-CV-00731, 5/5/25.