NC Appellate Court rules on Supreme Court race - where a 10,000 vote lead became a loss after weeks of counting!
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Today, a three-judge panel of the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled that more than 65,000 votes cast in the contested race for the state Supreme Court in 2024 must be recounted and verified — a massive win for the Republican candidate in the razor-thin, disputed contest!
The ruling ordered that a group of more than 65,000 voters, whose eligibility was challenged by Republican Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin and his lawyers, to provide state elections officials with the necessary proof of identity that would verify their votes, IN THE NEXT 15 DAYS!
The court ruled that any voters who don’t respond will NOT have their votes counted in the race between Griffin and Riggs.
“The inclusion of even one unlawful ballot in a vote total dilutes the lawful votes and ‘effectively disenfranchises’ lawful voters,” the Republican majority on the three-person panel wrote in its opinion. “Post-election protests protect against this risk of vote dilution by enabling candidates and voters to rigorously investigate the election process, identify and challenge unlawful ballots, and ensure those ballots are not counted.”
It is widely believed that most of the 65,000 questionable ballots are Democrats. According to the ruling, the North Carolina State Board of Elections is responsible for verifying those voters.
In a statement, Riggs said her campaign would appeal the ruling. Doing so will put the case before the North Carolina state Supreme Court — the same bench whose seat is at stake. Republicans currently have a 5-2 majority on that court.
The Democrat judge involved in the state Court of Appeals' decision said the majority’s ruling amounted to “changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes” and called the Republican majority's ruling an “an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the Constitution.”
The latest decision overturns a ruling by a lower state court from February that had effectively dismissed the case.
Griffin spokesperson Paul Shumaker said in a statement, "We are pleased" with the ruling and called it "a win for the citizens of North Carolina."
Griffin sits on the Court of Appeals but recused himself from the case.
Griffin and state Republicans have repeatedly claimed that the 65,000 votes in question should be invalidated because ineligible voters fraudulently cast them. Since the election, litigation over whether those votes should be counted has been stuck in both federal and state courts.
Riggs, the incumbent Democrat state Supreme Court judge appointed to the bench in 2023, was narrowly ahead of Griffin after Election Day, triggering a series of recounts.
According to multiple reports and via the NC SoS Elections website: on election day Griffin was leading Riggs by 10,000 votes, with more than 5.5 million votes cast. Then, after counting for several more weeks and much “ballot curing” (something WA State Voters are all too familiar with, as in the 2024 Commissioner of Public Lands race), Riggs led Griffin by 625 votes. Griffin then requested the first recount. A full machine recount ensued, as well as a partial hand recount.
Following the original ballot count after Election Day, the Griffin team filed hundreds of legal challenges across all of North Carolina’s 100 counties, alleging that more than 65,000 people voted illegally.
Many of the allegations centered around people who Griffin’s lawyers claimed didn’t have a driver’s license number or Social Security number on file in their voter registration records. Their protests were also related to overseas voters who haven’t lived in North Carolina and overseas voters who failed to provide photo identification with their ballots. The overseas votes alone outnumber the margin between Riggs and Griffin nearly tenfold.
OF NOTE: The complaint and ruling (pp 25 - 29) specifically mentions the Lack of Photo Identification for Military and Overseas (UOCAVA) Voters and the UMOVA voters that did not reside in NC but voted. The court AGREED THAT THESE CATEGORIES OF VOTERS SHOULD NOT HAVE HAD THEIR VOTES COUNTED, AND ARE NOT MEETING VOTER ELIGIBILITY STANDARDS.
Also, page 30 of the ruling says: the North Carolina Constitution provides only lawful residents of North Carolina, who are eligible and properly registered to vote, are entitled to vote in our state and non-federal elections.
As a reminder, the WA State Constitution Art 6 Sec 1 QUALIFICATIONS OF ELECTORS - SAYS All persons of the age of twenty-one years or over, possessing the following qualifications, shall be entitled to vote at all elections: They shall be citizens of the United States; they shall have lived in the state one year, and in the county ninety days, and in the city, town, ward or precinct thirty days immediately preceding the election at which they offer to vote
IT IS TIME TO FIX THE STATE’S ‘LAWS’ OF RESIDENCY AND TO FOLLOW THE CONSTITUTION!
Leftist lawyers have been descending on North Carolina to ensure Riggs remains on the bench in the last uncalled race of 2024. Many of these out-of-state legal firms work closely with Dem operative Marc Elias - the Elias Law Group. Elias received $5 million from George Soros in 2016 to fight against election integrity measures like requiring photo ID.
In its ruling the Court of Appeals instructed the State Board of Elections “to immediately direct the county boards to expeditiously identify the military and overseas voters challenged under this protest and notify said voters of their failure to abide by the photo ID requirement or equivalent, to allow said voters fifteen (15) business days from the mailing of the notice to cure the defect, and upon verification, to include in the count of this challenged election the votes of those voters who timely cure their failure to abide by the photo ID requirement and to omit from the final count the votes of those voters who fail to timely cure their deficiencies."
The two Republican Judges also said overseas voters who have never lived in North Carolina should not have their ballots counted!
Besides flipping a key Judicial seat, what a great opportunity for the DOGE team to run the ‘Voter Registrations’ in question, against their ineligible Social Security numbers they have been identifying with…
Bill Bruch
Bill Bruch is the WA State GOP Election Integrity Chairman (5th year), WAGOP Executive Board Member (5th Year), Skagit County GOP Chairman (9th year), Citizen Journalist, Blogger, Business Owner, “2021 Citizen Activist of the Year” award by the Olympic Conference, 2020 WA State House Representative Candidate, Former Council Member, and WA State 2016 and 2024 RNC National Convention Delegate.