(The Center Square) – Jefferson Griffin, Republican candidate for North Carolina Supreme Court, filed Wednesday asking that very court to step in to the final decision yet to be made by the State Board of Elections.
The state board has scheduled a Friday afternoon meeting for “consideration of protests of Jefferson Griffin, Ashlee Adams, Stacie McGinn and Frank Sossamon initially considered by county boards of elections.” Four races involving those Republicans are yet to receive the final action of election certificates; vote totals have been verified.
Griffin, backed by the North Carolina Republican Party, asks the Supreme Court “to stay the certification of the of the Supreme Court Seat 6 election, stay the 10-day deadline for Judge Griffin to file a petition for judicial review in Wake Superior Court, prohibit the State Board from counting unlawful ballots, and order the State Board to correct the vote count,” a release says.
Griffin is the lone petitioner in the writ; the State Board of Elections is the respondent.
Griffin protests more than 60,000 ballots. The board met last Wednesday and in a series of votes dismissed protests for which it had jurisdiction; county boards’ jurisdiction in the protests is the subject of Friday’s meeting.
The board voted 3-2 – all Democrats for, no Republicans for – against a formal hearing on votes involving lack of driver’s licenses or partial Social Security numbers; and 3-2 against probable cause to proceed for votes of people never having lived in the United States but with parents called North Carolina residents. The board was unanimously against the protest of no photo identification copies for overseas and military voters.
On Election Night, with 2,658 precincts reporting, Griffin led Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs by 9,851 votes of 5,540,090 cast. Provisional and absentee ballots that qualified were added to the totals since, swinging the race by 10,585 votes to a Riggs win by 734 votes.
Griffin’s filing says the state board “has knowingly broken the law and refused to do anything about it. Indeed, the board has been breaking our election laws for decades.”
Jason Simmons, chairman of the state Republican Party, said North Carolinians deserve confidence in administration of elections and have not been given such by the three Democrats and two Republicans on the board.
“The State Board of Elections,” he said in a release, “has not been fair or transparent, and it is by their actions alone we have no other choice than to take this step. Judge Griffin has led efforts to seek accountability and restore integrity while the State Board has been dragging its feet and ignoring the law.”
The request for a recusal of board member Siobhan Millan, whose husband is an attorney in the firm representing Riggs, was dismissed by Chairman Alan Hirsch and she participated in discussions and votes on the protests in last Wednesday’s meeting.
“This is a Board that allowed an ethically-conflicted member to hear protests and seemed unaware of state statutes regarding serving notice and our own voter ID laws,” spokesman Matt Mercer wrote in a Republican Party release. “The Board’s majority played their role in engineering an outcome favoring their preferred political party. That is not democracy.”
Since Riggs overtook Griffin in vote counting, Anderson Clayton, chairwoman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, has called for the Republican to “do the right and honorable thing and concede.” Clayton said “her victory is decisive.”
In a statement late Wednesday, Clayton said, “Jefferson Griffin is hiding behind Chief Justice Paul Newby and he is now trying to achieve what’s been aiming for all along: getting the Republican-controlled state Supreme Court to toss out legitimate ballots and hand this seat to him. His conduct continues to demonstrate that he is not fit to serve on the court. Concede now.”
Democrat Bryan Cohn defeated Sossamon by 228 votes of 42,202 cast for House District 32 seat; Woodson Bradley defeated McGinn by 209 votes of 124,311 cast for Senate District 42; and Terence Everitt defeated Adams by 128 votes of 119,206 cast for Senate District 18.
