North Carolina Supreme Court rules most challenged ballots must stay in election count

North Carolina’s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that tens of thousands of cast ballots challenged by the trailing candidate in November’s unresolved election for a seat on the court must remain in the election count.

The decision partially overturns last week’s ruling by a panel of the intermediate-level Court of Appeals that had favored Republican Jefferson Griffin.

But a majority of justices — all registered Republicans — agreed with the lower court that thousands of additional ballots from two other categories that Griffin contested were wrongly allowed in the tally. Some of these voters will still get a chance to provide a photo identification so that their choice in the race will remain counted, the court's prevailing order said.

The Supreme Court’s order isn’t expected to resolve the close race between Griffin and Democratic Associate Justice Allison Riggs, who leads Griffin by 734 votes from more than 5.5 million ballots cast in their race. It’s the only 2024 election in the country that is still undecided. Riggs has recused herself from deliberations that led to Friday's rulings.

The board and Riggs have signaled their plans to return to federal court if necessary should the justices side with Griffin to potentially plead violations of federal elections and voting rights laws.

It’s unclear what Griffin will do next, given that a large portion of the more than 65,000 ballots that he challenged will remain in the final count if the Supreme Court’s ruling remains intact. It's also unknown whether the outstanding ballots that are ultimately taken out of the count could flip the result to Griffin.

That largest category of voters includes ballots cast by people who registered to vote since 2004 and their records lack a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number.

Friday’s prevailing opinion said the Court of Appeals got it wrong by declaring these ballots shouldn't have been counted. That's because, according to the opinion, the blame rests with the State Board of Elections for failing to properly collect those numerical identifiers, not the voters.