The North Carolina State Board of Elections voted this week, mostly along party lines, to dismiss protests over more than 60,000 ballots in the race for a seat on the state Supreme Court. But that's not the end of the road for the runner-up.
The decision by the five-member, Democratic-majority board solidified the close election outcome, with incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs edging Republican Jefferson Griffin, a judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, by 734 votes.
A consultant for Griffin told 瓜神app, by text, that, based on a conversation he had with the Republican candidate last week, legal action would follow the state board's dismissal of the protests.
The narrow vote count between Riggs and Griffin held 鈥� and even increased a little 鈥� through a statewide machine recount and subsequent partial hand-to-eye recount of ballots from a small percentage of randomly selected early voting sites and precincts.
Because the recounts gave no indication that enough discrepancies existed to reverse the outcome, the state elections board ruled against ordering a full, statewide hand-to-eye recount. Separately, the board convened Wednesday to consider protests filed by Griffin under a variety of claims.
In the bulk of protests, Griffin's campaign alleged thousands of ballots were cast by voters who had not properly registered. The issue was that these voters registered using an outdated form that preceded the enactment of the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, and did not clearly mandate the registrant provide either the last four digits of their Social Security Number or a driver's license number.
The challenges before the state elections board also alleged some ballots should be discarded because they were cast by ineligible voters who live overseas. These protests claim children of overseas voters 鈥� for example, missionaries and military personnel 鈥� who had never resided in North Carolina, should not have been allowed to vote, though such voters .
And still other challenges protested ballots cast by military and overseas personnel who voted but did not provide a photo ID with their mail-in ballots, even though explicitly excuses such overseas voters from that requirement. The board unanimously voted to dismiss protests over this issue.
"We believe the winners of these elections should be determined by eligible voters and only eligible voter," said Craig Schauer, an attorney who addressed the state elections board on behalf of the Griffin campaign.
But another attorney representing North Carolina Republicans, Phil Strach, admitted to the board he didn't know of any particular voters who actually were not eligible to vote. However, Strach said that is because each challenged voter's records have not been run through relevant databases.
Each of the , according to the filings, lists Ryan Bonifay, director of Data and Analytics at Coldspark, a political consulting and strategy firm that works with Republican candidates and causes, as a witness.
The protests swept up registered Democratic, Republican, and unaffiliated voters and included elected officials and Allison Riggs' parents.
Ray Bennett, an attorney representing Riggs, told the state elections board on Wednesday that Griffin's protests violate a "bedrock principle" one learns in elementary school: "If you lose, you don't try to change the rules so you can claim that you won."
Last week, county elections boards heard other protests filed by Griffin 鈥� alleging irregularities such as ballots cast early by voters who then died prior to Election Day. Based on those hearings, a few dozen ballots were referred to the state elections board for review. And county board reviews of another five dozen or so votes are still outstanding.
However, none of the county board hearings turned up enough irregularities, alleged or otherwise, to reverse the outcome of the final vote count.
At the end of the state elections board's hearing, Chairman Alan Hirsch, a Democrat, said he regretted the board did not reach unanimity in all of its decisions. However, he added, "people being able to vote and not be disenfranchised is extraordinarily important."
"That's a fundamental, constitutional right, it's what makes our democracy run."
