(The Center Square) – Calling it “egregious assaults on voting rights” and “sinister and shameful,” Democrats alongside North Carolina’s unsettled election battle lashed out at Republicans and Judge Jefferson Griffin on Monday afternoon.
Allison Riggs, the Democrat appointed to the state Supreme Court by Gov. Roy Cooper, was not part of the virtual press conference with Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, Cooper and North Carolina Democratic Party Chairwoman Anderson Clayton. The race for seat 6 on the bench is the lone race without a certificate from the State Board of Elections.
Calling Griffin’s protests of about 60,000 votes “baseless,” Harrison said, “They can’t stand the fact that they were rejected by North Carolina voters fair and square. They want to throw out votes by eligible North Carolina residents.”
In fact, that is part of the protest. Griffin believes the state election board wrongly rejected his protests and has pursued litigation. The decisions of the election board, 3-2 majority Democrats, have trended on party lines.
The protests the state board denied included registration records of voters, such as lack of providing either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number. State law for that has been in place two decades, dating back to 2004; registrations prior were grandfathered in, Clayton explained.
Other ballots protested and denied by the state board included voters overseas who have never lived in the United States, and for lack of photo identification provided with military and overseas voters.
Cooper, his eight years as governor having ended Dec. 31, called the court action against a state panel with majority tied to his appointment power “an egregious attack on the right to vote. They will do anything in order to win.”
All three panelists called it an attack on democracy. And they warned “the eyes of the nation were watching,” saying “the playbook” would be used across the country if successful.
For context to Cooper’s collective comments, he was among those leading the fight after 55.49% of nearly 3.7 million voters at the ballot box in 2018 favored photo identification when voting. He and others, including the Southern Coalition for Social Justice with Riggs as chief counsel part of the time, fought the constitutional amendment for more than half a decade.
Less than one-tenth of 1% of 1.8 million had any trouble with the new law on Super Tuesday last year with the litigation challenges six years later finally overcome. Harrison, Cooper and Clayton on Monday all lauded how well Democrats did in November, a rebuke of previous arguments from the former governor and others that the party would be hurt by photo ID.
Cooper appointed Riggs to the state Court of Appeals in December 2022, then to the Supreme Court nine months later. She’s never won an election.
Clayton, in answer to one of seven questions allowed, said the courts and other areas are being politicized by the Republican majority Legislature. She called the state a 50-50 makeup, though Saturday’s update continues to show unaffiliated registrations are the largest voting bloc with more than one-third of the state’s more than 7.8 million.
For context, 21 years ago Democrats owned 47.6% of the voting bloc and unaffiliated was less than 18%. Republicans have dropped from 34% to just under 30%.
Decisions are awaited in state and federal courts in this third month since Election Day, with filings and responses due on five of the next 11 days starting Tuesday.
Griffin, state appellate court judge seeking his sixth consecutive election win, has had all of his protests rejected by the state board leaving Riggs in a 734-vote victory awaiting the election certificate of the state board.
On Election Night, with 2,658 precincts reporting, Griffin led Riggs by 9,851 votes of more than 5.5 million cast. Provisional and absentee ballots that qualified were added to the totals since, swinging the race by 10,585 votes.
In a statement Wednesday, the state Republican Party said, “The protests highlight specific irregularities and discrepancies in the handling and counting of ballots, raising concerns about adherence to established election laws.” And, it said, “It is imperative that blatant violations of state law are decided by our state’s highest court.”
Republican Party Chairman Jason Simmons added, “The people of North Carolina are ready to finally see this process brought to a conclusion and the laws our state faithfully followed. Judge Griffin is fighting to ensure election integrity and resolution of these issues in a fair manner.”
