The Republican-controlled North Carolina Supreme Court on Tuesday stopped the State Board of Elections from certifying Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs’ apparent narrow victory for a seat on the highest court.
After two recounts, Riggs leads Republican Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes.
But Griffin is challenging the validity of ballots cast by 60,000 voters — most of whom have incomplete voter registrations. They lack either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number on file.
The state elections board has said the missing data is due to a misleading registration form that didn’t explicitly say that information was required. The list of challenged voters include some who have voted for years without incident, including Riggs’ parents in Durham County.
The Board of Elections, which has a Democratic majority, was scheduled to certify Riggs’ victory Friday. But the Supreme Court’s order has put that on hold for at least two weeks.
Riggs has recused herself.
Justice Anita Earls — the only Democrat on the court hearing the case — dissented. She wrote the challenge has “no likelihood of success” and that the court “should not interfere with the ordinary course of democratic processes.”
