The North Carolina Supreme Court has blocked state officials from certifying the re-election of Democrat Allison Riggs to the court, allowing her Republican rival to challenge the validity of nearly 60,000 votes in the race.
In a 4-2 vote Tuesday, the GOP-controlled court issued an order to temporarily halt the certification after Riggs’ GOP opponent, Jefferson Griffin, alleged that tens of thousands of people had voted illegally. All but one of the court’s Republican justices sided with the order. Riggs recused herself from the decision.
The ruling sets up a situation in which the state Supreme Court will weigh in on an election that could expand the GOP’s current 5-2 majority among the justices, and decide whether to toss the ballots of tens of thousands of voters.
A razor-thin November election result led to recounts, and Riggs emerged in the lead by a mere 734 votes out of more than 5.5 million. According to NBC News, Griffin then filed hundreds of legal challenges across the state, alleging that nearly 60,000 people had voted illegally and claiming in part that many of their voter registration records did not include a driver’s license number or Social Security number.
North Carolina law requires voters to present valid identification for both in-person voting and mail ballots. The state elections board, which has a Democratic majority, rejected Griffin’s arguments in December. He subsequently took his challenge to the state Supreme Court. The board had been due to certify Riggs’ win by the end of the week. But the Tuesday order prevents it from doing so, and the state Supreme Court said it would hear arguments in the case at the end of January.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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