Federal judges block North Carolina Supreme Court election 'cure' process -- for now

Kyle Ingram, The News & Observer on Apr 22, 2025

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RALEIGH, N.C. — A federal appeals court on Tuesday temporarily blocked North Carolina election officials from beginning a massive ballot review period stemming from Jefferson Griffin’s challenge of his loss in the 2024 state Supreme Court race.

The 2-1 ruling, which came from a panel of judges on the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, means that, for now, the state will not go through with a court-ordered cure process that could have disqualified thousands of votes and flipped the election in Griffin’s favor.

Griffin and the North Carolina Republican Party have spent nearly six months contesting his 734-vote loss to Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs, initially seeking to discard over 65,000 ballots on untested legal grounds.

Representatives for Riggs and the NC GOP could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday evening.

Earlier this month, the North Carolina Supreme Court rejected Griffin’s largest challenge, but left potentially thousands of votes in jeopardy. In a 4-2 ruling, the high court ordered that military and overseas voters who Griffin challenged for not providing a photo ID with their absentee ballot would be given a 30-day “cure period” to show identification to election officials or risk having their votes thrown out. A smaller number of challenged voters would have their ballots discarded with no opportunity to cure them.

Riggs immediately brought the matter to federal court, where U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers said he would review the case before a winner was certified but would not stop the cure period from beginning.

Riggs appealed to the 4th Circuit, which agreed on Tuesday to issue a stay halting the cure period, at least until Myers could rule on the merits of the case.

Circuit Judge Arthur Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. dissented from the majority, saying a stay was not necessary because the district judge already ordered the state not to certify the election based on the results of the cure period.

“The district court preserved its ability to resolve any remaining federal issues by ordering the Board not to certify the election results. It also set a very quick process for resolving any federal claims,” Quattlebaum wrote. “... I find no error in the district court’s handling of all these competing issues on a very compressed time frame.”

Without Tuesday’s ruling, the State Board of Elections would have had to begin the cure period soon by sending out notices to all of the affected voters. However, in state court, Griffin is currently arguing with the board about exactly how many voters should be included in the cure period.

For now, though, all of the affected voters do not have to provide documentation to validate their ballots, though this may change with further court action.

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