Federal court is the proper venue for a legal battle over a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court, according to a bipartisan group of former U.S. congressmen and senators who helped pass legislation protecting voting rights.
As it stands, Republican Jefferson Griffin has lost his race against Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs for a seat on the state Supreme Court. After two recounts, Riggs leads Griffin by more than 700 votes.
But Griffin, a judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, is trying to convince a federal district court judge to block certification of the race and to send the matter back to the state Supreme Court 鈥� which has a decisive conservative majority 鈥� to decide whether more than 60,000 ballots should be invalidated.
That question 鈥� whether the case belongs in state or federal court 鈥� has drawn the attention of a bipartisan group, including former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a Democrat, and Christopher Shays, a former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut.
The group filed an amicus brief on Tuesday with Judge Richard Myers, a Trump appointee, of the U.S. District Court in North Carolina's Eastern District, arguing that Griffin's case should remain in federal court.
Griffin is protesting more than 60,000 ballots in his statewide contest over alleged irregularities, including purported incomplete registrations. The voters swept up in the wide net of Griffin's protests included registered Democrats, Republicans, Riggs' parents, and an editor at 瓜神app.
Last month, after the North Carolina State Board of Elections dismissed Griffin's election protests due to a lack of sufficient evidence of irregularities 鈥� as well as failing to serve affected voters with adequate notice of the allegations 鈥� the Republican judicial candidate sought intervention from the state Supreme Court, the court he hopes to serve on.
Griffin bypassed the typical court appeals process and went directly to the high court with a writ of prohibition asking the justices to throw out the contested ballots. But the state elections board had the case removed to federal district court.
In most cases, Griffin has alleged the ballots should be invalidated due to incomplete voter registrations. The issue has to do with voters who registered 鈥� many years ago 鈥� using a form that predated the federal Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, of 2002, which did not mandate registrants provide the last four digits of their Social Security number or their driver's license number.
In his legal filings, Griffin has argued the North Carolina Supreme Court should take up his case and invalidate the disputed ballots because they fail to comply with state law, irrespective of their compliance with federal law.
But, the amicus brief noted, North Carolina has a unified elections registration system and uses a single form for voters to register for eligibility in state and federal races.
"It makes no difference to this analysis that this case involves an election for a state, rather than federal, office," the bipartisan group argued in their brief.
The group's brief added: "Judge Griffin therefore cannot escape HAVA by adverting to the fact that this dispute concerns a state election."
Furthermore, according to the brief, the goal of HAVA was to achieve greater uniformity across the country when it comes to voter registration. To achieve that, the brief added, "federal courts must have an opportunity to interpret the statute."
Griffin has also protested the counting of some ballots submitted by absentee military and overseas voters who did not provide photo identification, even though explicitly excuses such overseas voters from that requirement.
Griffin 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 .
Unless a court intervenes, the state elections board could certify the election outcome next week.
