In the prolonged legal battle over a North Carolina Supreme Court seat, a state appeals panel ruled on Friday that tens of thousands of voters would need to promptly verify their eligibility or have their ballots thrown out. The decision could lead to the results of the November election being overturned.
The ruling was a win for Judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican who narrowly lost the election in November and challenged the result. His opponent, Justice Allison Riggs, is one of two Democrats on the seven-member Supreme Court. The case has tested the boundaries of post-election litigation and drawn wide criticism.
Judge Griffin’s legal argument centers on a claim that some 65,000 people who voted early or by mail in the Supreme Court election did not provide required proof of identity — either the last four digits of a Social Security number or a driver’s license number — when they registered.
Although the omissions were no fault of the voters, he has argued, they left the voters’ eligibility in question. He has said that their ballots should be thrown out unless they provide legitimate proof of identity within a limited period of time set by the state.
Two Republican judges on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, John Tyson and Fred Gore, agreed with Judge Griffin in the majority opinion for the three-judge panel, arguing that even one unlawful vote essentially “disenfranchises lawful voters.” They ruled that the voters in question “should be allowed a period of 15 business days after notice to cure their defective registrations.”