What Is Going on With the State Supreme Court Race?

Update: Republican Jefferson Griffin has filed more than 300 election protests in all 100 counties, alleging county elections officials allowed ineligible voters to cast ballots. Among the allegations, Griffin says county elections officials improperly counted votes from convicted felons, people who filed incomplete voter registration forms, people who should have been removed from voter rolls and voters who cast ballots early but died before Election Day. He also challenges votes from people who live overseas and never resided in North Carolina but have parents who are registered North Carolina voters. Griffin says the state law that allows such votes is unconstitutional.

The State Board of Elections will hold an emergency preliminary hearing on the election protests at 4 p.m. today. If the board finds probable cause, it would then hold an evidentiary hearing. Griffin’s attorney contends that there are enough allegedly illegal votes that could affect the outcome of this close election.

Update: Republican Jefferson Griffin officially requested a recount on Tuesday, which would start November 20 and end on the 27th. If the race is still close, Griffin could request a hand count, which would take place the week of December 2.

As of early Tuesday afternoon, Riggs is up 625 votes. Duplin and Northampton counties have not yet certified their results.

In a race that has truly come down to the wire, Democrat Allison Riggs now appears to have held on to her seat on the state Supreme Court. On election night, it appeared she would lose to her Republican opponent, Jefferson Griffin. But as of Monday night, Riggs was up 623 votes—or about 0.02 percent of the total ballots cast.

That still may not be the final result. Under state law, a difference of 10,000 votes or less allows Griffin to request a recount.

The race also looks to be heading to court, as Griffin, his campaign, and the state Republican Party filed a lawsuit and a temporary restraining order in Wake County on Monday. The complaint alleges that state elections officials violated public-records law by not providing data that could have helped Griffin’s campaign file protests over votes they believe were ineligible. 

Republican Party officials and Jefferson’s campaign say the missing information could allow them to determine how many people may have cast both in-person and mail-in ballots, had felony convictions that should have removed them from voter rolls, or cast early ballots but then died before Election Day. They also asked for information about how many people cast ballots using the curbside voting method, though it was unclear what exactly the concern was about the method.

Before the lawsuit was filed on Monday, Griffin campaign adviser Paul Shumaker made it clear that the campaign had concerns about the ongoing count. 

“The current process has raised many questions and few answers are being provided,” Shumaker said Monday. “It is most troubling when the media reports on local county elections officials choosing not to follow the law. We will pursue all avenues to ensure the confidence and trust is applied to this process.” 

Shumaker was referring to a WRAL report about the Wake County Board of Elections choosing to count the votes of three people who cast their ballots early but died before Election Day. The board voted 3-2 along partisan lines to include them. 

Neither Riggs nor her campaign had an immediate comment on the race or the lawsuit. Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the state board of elections, told other media outlets that Griffin’s campaign demanded over the weekend that the records be produced by 7 a.m. Monday. 

“The law does not require that, but they filed a lawsuit this morning anyway,” he said in a statement, according to the News & Observer. “The State Board provided the requested records today. In fact, the lawyers for this campaign were informed this morning that the records would be provided today, but they served the agency with the lawsuit anyway. In sum, this lawsuit is thoroughly unnecessary.”

The Wake County Board of Elections dismissed a complaint from Jay DeLancy, executive director of the Voter Integrity Project, demanding that a new state Supreme Court election be held. He alleged that ineligible voters remained on the rolls and were allowed to cast ballots, the News & Observer reported. 

A Friday Night Surprise

Riggs gained the upper hand on Friday night with the addition of Wake County’s final results.

After the election, there is a 10-day period known as “canvassing” during which county election officials count eligible mail-in ballots and review provisional ballots to determine if each voter was eligible, and if their vote should count. A ballot may be considered provisional due to a voter not having their photo ID, or because they cast their ballot at the wrong precinct. Counties typically have until November 15 to complete that process.

Heading into Monday, six counties requested an extension to continue counting provisional and mail-in absentee ballots: Chatham, Craven, Cumberland, Forsyth, Randolph, and Yancey. At the end of day Monday, it appeared Forsyth, Duplin, and Northampton still had not certified their results, according to the state election results map. 

It is clear, at this point, that the margin of victory for Riggs will be thin no matter what, paving the way for Griffin to request a recount. If he requests one, he has to do it by noon on Tuesday, and the first one is done by machine. If the race remains close, a candidate can request a hand recount in a sample of precincts, which would be done by a bipartisan team of four people and can take a long time. (Reporter Lisa Rab explained this in more detail earlier this month.)

Riggs’s campaign said in a statement Monday night that they expect a recount to be requested. “We expect a recount to be called in this race. “Recounts are a normal part of election processes and show our democracy at work. They allow for transparency and inspire confidence in our electoral systems,” said campaign manager Embry Owen. “Our team continues to feel gratitude for all election officials who are working hard to ensure a smooth, fair, and timely process.”

Recounts also rarely change outcomes, according to an October report from nonpartisan organization FairVote. Only three out of 36 recounts between 2000 and 2023 resulted in victory for the candidate making the request. 

In 2020, when Cheri Beasley requested a recount in her race for chief justice against Paul Newby, all 100 boards of elections first did a machine recount and then there was a hand recount in 3 percent of precincts in each county. Beasley eventually conceded in mid-December that year.

Democrats Cling to the Minority

Whether or not Riggs could keep her seat has been a big question for state Democrats. Republicans currently hold a 5-2 majority, with Riggs and Anita Earls as the only two Democrats on the court.

Justices serve eight-year terms, and Earls is up for reelection in 2026. If Democrats hold any hope of retaking the majority they lost in 2022, they’ll need to hold both those seats and hope for a sweep in 2028, when three more are on the ballot.

The state’s highest court has become yet another political battleground over the last decade, after Republican lawmakers eliminated public financing in 2013 and then made statewide judicial races partisan in 2018. In 2020, state judicial races broke fundraising records at an estimated $15 million. 

Rulings have become more partisan, too. Last year, the court’s conservative majority decided a trio of voting rights cases, and in two of them, it reversed rulings the court had issued when it was controlled by Democrats. In dissents, Earls and Riggs have accused their colleagues of putting politics above the law. And sometimes, things have gotten personal. Justice Richard Dietz, writing for the majority, characterized Earls’ dissent in one case as “unhinged,” “hyperbolic,” and “exaggerated.” 

Anderson Clayton, chair of the state Democratic Party, told The Assembly earlier this year that Democrats had historically dropped the ball on statewide judicial races. The state party sought to change that in 2024, creating a coordinated campaign fund for judicial races and hiring a director devoted to those races. Clayton said the party invested in communications, digital advertising, and media strategies as well as boots-on-the-ground organizing for this election. 

Riggs previously worked as a civil rights attorney at Southern Coalition for Social Justice, the Durham-based nonprofit that Earls founded in 2007. Gov. Roy Cooper appointed her to the Court of Appeals in 2022 and then appointed her to the state Supreme Court last year after Mike Morgan resigned to run in the gubernatorial primary. 

While she didn’t discuss specific cases in her campaign, Riggs did talk about issues like reproductive rights and the environment on the stump. Last month, Republican state Sen. Buck Newton filed an ethics complaint with the Judicial Standards Commission against Riggs, accusing her of violating the code of judicial conduct by running ads on reproductive rights. Riggs said in a post on X that she did nothing wrong. Complaints with the Judicial Standards Commission are confidential, as well as any potential investigations. A complaint only becomes public if the state Supreme Court issues disciplinary action. Newton did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. 

Griffin, a former prosecutor and district court judge who won his Court of Appeals seat in 2020, has not been as explicit on issues, choosing instead to emphasize his conservative credentials as an originalist who says he will not let politics influence how he interprets the law. 

However, Griffin got some backlash when he concurred with a now-withdrawn opinion from fellow Republican Court of Appeals Judge Hunter Murphy, which stated “life begins at conception.” Griffin has declined to comment about why he concurred with the opinion or why it was withdrawn. 

Michael Hewlett is a staff reporter at The Assembly. He was previously the legal affairs reporter at the Winston-Salem Journal. You can reach him at michael@theassemblync.com.