Addressing reporters on Monday, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison recalled the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.
"The ability of Americans to vote, our most sacred right, is now, once again, under attack by Republicans," Harrison said. "The ground zero of this fight, in early 2025, lies in the great state of North Carolina."
The DNC chairman was addressing the effort by Jefferson Griffin to have more than 60,000 ballots invalidated in his race for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Had the race been certified last week as scheduled before the state Supreme Court halted the process, the winner of that race would have been Democrat Allison Riggs, the incumbent justice who leads Griffin by 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast.
Riggs' lead has been confirmed by two recounts.
But Griffin has filed protests over more than 60,000 ballots claiming the voters who cast them were ineligible for a host of reasons, including, in most of the cases, that they were improperly registered.
"If they are successful in this scheme," warned former Gov. Roy Cooper, referring to Griffin and fellow Republicans, "there will be copycat lawsuits across this country for races where they don't like the results."
And the former governor, who just finished his second term as North Carolina's chief executive, expressed grave concerns about the impact Griffin's efforts — should he succeed — could have on voter confidence in the election system.
"Voters in North Carolina will be unable to walk out of a voting booth ever again and feel confident that their vote will count," Cooper said.
"Judge Griffin is fighting for the rule of law and state statutes to be followed," Matt Mercer, spokesman for the North Carolina Republican Party, asserted in an email responding to WUNC's request for comment.
"The systemic issues have not been refuted or resolved despite Democrats' best efforts to convince the people of North Carolina they are," Mercer added.
After hearings in December, the Democratic-majority North Carolina State Board of Elections found Griffin lacked evidence of any actual ineligible voters — and that he failed to provide adequate notice to challenged voters — and the ballot protests.
But Griffin, a judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, filed a writ of prohibition with the solidly conservative state Supreme Court asking the justices to block certification and to consider invalidating the ballots.
Last week, the state's high court granted Griffin's request and issued a stay in a 4-2 vote.
Riggs recused herself from the matter, since she's a candidate in the contested race. Justice Anita Earls, the high court's only other Democrat, dissented in the order granting the stay.
One of the court's five Republican justices, Richard Dietz, also dissented, writing that Griffin's petition "is, in effect, post-election litigation that seeks to remove the legal right to vote from people who lawfully voted under the laws and regulations that existed during the voting process."
Another conservative justice, Trey Allen, wrote that issuing the stay should not be read as an indication that Griffin, the GOP candidate, will prevail on the merits in his effort to have the disputed ballots tossed.
Griffin's allegations of incomplete voter registrations are rooted in an issue that previously has been reviewed — and dismissed — by a federal court.
It has to do with voters who registered — many years and election cycles ago — using a form that predated the federal Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, of 2002. The pre-HAVA registration form did not clearly mandate registrants provide the last four digits of their Social Security number or their driver's license number.
Griffin's protests notwithstanding, neither state law nor HAVA makes having a Social Security number or a driver's license number a prerequisite for voting. A voter whose registration data does not contain one of those numbers would just be asked to provide a HAVA ID — a document such as a utility bill — when they first show up to vote after registering.
And now, with a state photo ID requirement, voters casting ballots in person or by mail must provide identification or fill out exception forms with the requested data that get reviewed and verified by local elections boards.
In fewer instances, Griffin has challenged ballots cast by military and overseas citizens who did not provide photo ID with their absentee votes, even though state law excuses them from doing so. And Griffin has challenged a far fewer number of ballots cast by overseas citizens who never resided in North Carolina, despite state law explicitly saying such citizens are eligible to vote.
"These are 60,000 North Carolinians that followed the rules," North Carolina Democratic Party Chairwoman Anderson Clayton said on Monday's call with reporters. "They did nothing wrong."
"Not once has anyone said voters are at fault," the NCGOP's Matt Mercer said in the email to WUNC when informed of the NC Democratic Party chairwoman's comments. "This is a hollow talking point and again exposes how Democrats cannot talk about the merits because if they do, their pressure campaign falls apart in a fair legal setting."
"North Carolinians should be able to trust the process and trust that legal votes from our state's citizens should decide elections," Mercer added.
Anderson Clayton told reporters that the effort underway by Griffin is bigger than just one judicial race in North Carolina.
"We're talking about a calculated effort by a sitting judge to throw out votes and reject the results of a fair and free election," she added.
While the state Supreme Court has blocked certification and has ordered the parties to file briefs in the case over the next 10 days, the U.S. 4th Circuit is also reviewing the matter.
The state elections board, joined by Riggs and some advocacy groups, appealed to the 4th Circuit because of the election protests' implications for federal law and constitutional protections for voting.
The 4th Circuit has scheduled oral arguments for Jan. 27 on whether the federal courts should retain jurisdiction over the case.
