Democratic members of the state legislature who served in the military called on Republican judicial candidate Jefferson Griffin to abandon his election protest over more than 65,000 ballots in an uncertified race for the North Carolina Supreme Court.
Griffin's protests include an effort to invalidate 5,509 absentee ballots cast by military and overseas voters registered in four of the state's bluest counties.
"When you challenge military ballots, you are not just challenging pieces of paper," said state Sen. Val Applewhite. "You are challenging the very people who put everything on the line for this country."
Applewhite represents Cumberland County, home to the army base Fort Liberty, and served in the U.S. Air Force for 20 years. She called Griffin's ballot challenges "disgraceful" and "un-American."
"This fight is bigger than just one election," Applewhite told reporters gathered at the North Carolina General Assembly for a news conference on Wednesday. "It's about whether we, as a state, will allow election losers to re-write the rules of the game once it has been played."
Griffin trails incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes, as confirmed by multiple recounts.
But the GOP candidate, a judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, has turned to state courts to toss out the challenged ballots. Griffin has alleged that more than 60,000 ballots were cast by early and mail-in voters who are not properly registered under state law because their records do not contain their driver's license number or last four digits of their Social Security number.
He also has sued to discard 5,509 absentee ballots cast by UOCAVA voters, military and overseas personnel and their family members covered by the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. Griffin challenged those ballots because the covered voters did not present photo ID, even though and exempt them from doing so.
Griffin went to court after the North Carolina State Board of Elections reviewed his protests and dismissed them, citing a lack of evidence of actual voter ineligibility.
Buncombe County Rep. Eric Ager, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a naval aviator for 25 years, joined fellow veteran Sen. Applewhite, as well as Mecklenburg County Rep. Nasif Majeed, a former combat pilot who flew missions during the Vietnam War, to address reporters at a news conference on Wednesday, and to call on Griffin to concede.
Ager said he previously voted in North Carolina elections using UOCAVA ballots when he lived with his family abroad during foreign deployments in Guam, Turkey, and Germany. So, he added, Griffin's attack on UOCAVA ballots was "personal."
Ager described the people he served with in the military as "idealists" who "believe in our individual freedoms and the promise of our form of government."
"Throwing out votes just so that you can win without any logical reason for doing so may make sense during arcane legal discussions about pieces of paper," Ager said, "but it doesn't make sense to regular people, and it absolutely flies in the face of what is fair and what is right."
Ager said Griffin's protests against UOCAVA ballots were particularly egregious since the Republican candidate previously voted that way when deployed as a member of the North Carolina Army National Guard. When Griffin cast a UOCAVA ballot in 2020, there was no photo ID requirement in effect for the state's general electorate.
Another representative, Marcia Morey, addressed reporters on Wednesday. Morey is not a military veteran, but the Durham Democrat was there to speak on behalf of one, Rebecca Lobach, an unaffiliated voter registered in Durham County.
Lobach was a captain in the U.S. Army and a Black Hawk helicopter crew member who died in a midair collision with a passenger jet last week over the Potomac River, in Washington, D.C.
Lobach's UOCAVA ballot was one of the votes swept up in Jefferson Griffin's election protests.
"She can't fight to have her ballot count, so we will stand here and try and do it for her," Morey told reporters.
Jefferson Griffin has not responded to 瓜神app's requests for comment on the Democratic lawmakers who called on him to concede.
瓜神app also sent inquiries to 15 Republican state lawmakers who served in the military asking their views of Griffin's election protests.
One state senator, Michael Lazzara, a Marine Corps veteran, said through a spokesman he was unavailable to respond by deadline. Rep. Hugh Blackwell, a veteran of the Army Reserve, apologized but said that he was in a meeting.
A spokeswoman for Sen. Danny Britt, who has served for more than 20 years in the Army National Guard, emailed this reply to 瓜神app's request for comment: "NOT INTERESTED!"
None of the other GOP legislators had responded to 瓜神app's request by deadline.
A hearing in Wake County Superior Court on Griffin's protests is scheduled for this Friday.
