North Carolina Justices Toss Votes in Win for GOP Challenger (1)

The Republican-controlled North Carolina Supreme Court has ordered state election officials to reject overseas votes in the re-election campaign of a siting Democratic justice, giving a partial victory to her Republican election challenger.

The court’s order issued Friday afternoon tosses several hundred “never resident” ballots cast by children of North Carolina residents who turned eighteen and voted abroad. The order also gives hundreds of military voters 30 days to provide election officials with photo ID that wasn’t included when they voted abroad.

While the court’s order preserved the bulk of the more than 60,000 ballots that Republicans were challenging, siting Justice Allison Riggs (D) holds less than an 800-vote advantage over appeals court Judge Jefferson Griffin (R). Riggs issued a statement saying she’d immediately challenge her colleague’s ruling in federal court.

“I’m the proud daughter of a 30-year military veteran who was deployed overseas, and it is unacceptable that the Court is choosing to selectively disenfranchise North Carolinians serving our country, here and overseas,” she said.

Griffin’s challenge centered on election officials’ rules allowing residents to register to vote without a driver’s license number or social security number on file. More than 60,000 voters had registered prior to the state changing registration rules, the board said.

In its ruling the Republican majority chastised the board but said it wouldn’t disenfranchise these voters or require them to “cure” their registrations like the appeals court had ordered.

“The Board’s inattention and failure to dutifully conform its conduct to the law’s requirements is deeply troubling,” the court said in an unauthored opinion. However, “the wholesale voiding of ballots cast by individuals who subsequently proved their identity to the Board by complying with the voter identification law” would undermine principles in state precedent.

However, the high court aligned with the appeals court on military and overseas voters.

It expanded the court of appeal’s “cure” period for military voters to provide identification from 15 days to 30 days. The court also ordered election officials to reject “never residents"—the young voters who turned 18 abroad traveling with their North Carolinian parents because they hadn’t “expressed an intent to live in North Carolina.”

Riggs recused from this case. The court’s sole remaining Democrat, Anita Earls, issued a partial dissent criticizing her colleagues from endangering or rejecting between 2,000 to 7,000 votes that were only challenged by the GOP in counties that vote heavily for liberal candidates.

“Explaining how that is fair, just, or consistent with fundamental legal principles is impossible, so the majority does not try,” she said.

The case is Griffin v. North Carolina State Bd. of Elections, N.C., No. 320P24-3, 4/11/25.