Jefferson Griffin’s concession in the North Carolina Supreme Court race was a massive win for Democrats, who had warned that his six-month attempt to overturn his narrow election loss could undermine democracy nationwide.

But the lengthy court battle saw several wins for Republicans, too, potentially setting precedent that will affect elections for years to come.

While a federal judge ruled that the over 65,000 voters challenged by Griffin should have their votes upheld, his ruling left the interpretation of future election law to the state.

“The court wishes to make clear that this case is not about the prerogative of North Carolina courts to interpret North Carolina law,” Chief U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers wrote. “Without question, those courts ‘are the principal expositors of state law.’ This case is also not about North Carolina’s primacy to establish rules for future state elections; it may do so.”

And when the case came before them, the justices of the North Carolina Supreme Court’s Republican majority signaled they largely agreed with the reasoning underlying Griffin’s protests.

That means North Carolina voters can expect substantial changes for election policy and voter registration going forward.

60,000 registration issues

Griffin’s largest challenge argued that over 60,000 voters who lacked either a driver’s license or Social Security number in the state’s voter registration database should have their ballots discarded.

Throughout the legal battle, the State Board of Elections argued that the absence of these numbers was likely not the voters’ fault and could have been caused by a variety of harmless clerical errors. Furthermore, they argued, all voters were required to present ID in the 2024 election, mitigating any concerns about fraud.

Later, the board even presented an affidavit saying that over half of the voters challenged for this reason actually did provide the identifying information in question — it just didn’t show up in an initial pull of the state’s database.

When the case reached the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court, justices agreed with Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs and the board that voters could not be punished for this reason.

However, the justices stressed that “the board’s inattention and failure to dutifully conform its conduct to the law’s requirements is deeply troubling.”

The Supreme Court’s order stopped short of specifically instructing the State Board of Elections to fix the missing numbers.

As part of a parallel legal fight, however, Republicans have gained control of the formerly Democratic-controlled elections board. That could make the board more willing to address the missing information.

In a statement to The News & Observer, Pat Gannon, a spokesperson for the elections board, said the agency is working on a plan to coordinate with county election boards to obtain any necessary voter information that is lacking.

If the board were to take a more aggressive approach — though it has not indicated they plan on doing so — it could raise a whole host of other legal problems, according to Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University.

“Let’s say the state board says ‘We have to fix all these 60,000 votes or we’re going to pull their voter registration,’” he said. “I’m sure that would be challenged in court within minutes.”

Voter ID for military and overseas voters

Griffin’s second challenge argued that military and overseas voters who didn’t provide ID should have their votes canceled for not complying with the state’s voter ID law.

The State Board of Elections had unanimously approved an exemption to the ID requirement for these voters, which was approved by the state’s Rules Review Commission and not challenged before the election.

Also, a federal law known as UOCAVA states that military and overseas voters don’t have to provide ID — though this only applies to federal elections.

Nevertheless, Griffin challenged thousands of voters for this reason — all of whom came from counties that lean heavily Democratic.

The state Supreme Court upheld the ruling of the state Court of Appeals, which agreed with Griffin that the exemption could not stand.

“The board’s interpretation runs counter to the General Assembly’s express purpose in enacting the photo ID requirement, to minimize the risk of voter fraud,” a panel of Court of Appeals judges wrote. “... by imposing the photo ID requirement only on domestic absentee and election day voters while not also requiring identification verification for individuals casting votes from another country.”

Rather than agreeing with Griffin to immediately throw out the ballots, though, the Supreme Court ordered a 30-day “cure period” for the affected voters to either show ID to election officials or have their votes discarded.

A federal judge later struck this cure period down, but the Supreme Court’s interpretation of voter ID law still stands.

Gannon said that in future elections, military and overseas voters will be required to include a photocopy of their ID or an ID exception form when they return their ballots.

However, the court’s decision carved out federal elections from this requirement.

So, if a future voter were to fail to submit the ID documentation, their votes would still be counted for federal contests on the ballot — but not state or local ones.

‘Never Residents’

The last category of challenged voters were what Griffin called “Never Residents.”

These are the adult children of North Carolina residents who live abroad and indicated they have never resided in the state.

A state law passed over a decade ago in a unanimous vote expressly allows these voters to participate in state elections, and they have done so in dozens of elections without issue.

But the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling finding this practice unconstitutional.

They ordered that over 250 voters challenged under this category should have their ballots discarded without the opportunity to cure them.

Reporting from Anderson Alerts and Popular Information, however, found that dozens of the so-called “Never Residents” were actually longtime North Carolina citizens and had been misclassified.

Citing this, the federal judge struck down the Supreme Court’s order and stopped those votes from being discarded.

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court’s ruling is binding for future elections.

Gannon said that, going forward, “Never Residents” will only be allowed to participate in federal elections in North Carolina.

This change, alongside the ID requirements for military and overseas voters, will require the board — for the first time — to maintain two separate voter rolls. One will include voters eligible to vote in all elections, and the other will include everyone eligible to vote in federal elections only.

Will NC change its laws?

State lawmakers could choose to address the court’s rulings with legislation this session, but they may simply rely on the newly constituted State Board of Elections to carry out things differently — as it has already indicated it will.

Asked if further action was needed from the General Assembly to address these rulings, the state’s top two legislative leaders had different views.

“I think that we’ve got court decisions by the North Carolina court authorities that make it clear what the law is in those instances,” Senate leader Phil Berger told reporters.

House Speaker Destin Hall, however, said he did anticipate some tweaks to the law in response to the case.

“But the good news is we have a board of elections now that I’m confident will interpret and follow the law of this body,” he said. “So that makes things a lot easier.”

Last year, in the final days of their veto-proof supermajority, Republican lawmakers passed a bill stripping Democratic Gov. Josh Stein of his power to appoint members to the election board. Instead, they transferred the authority to the state auditor, a position which had just been won by a Republican for the first time in 16 years.

While a trial court found that power shift unconstitutional, the state Court of Appeals reversed that ruling just one day before the law took effect, allowing State Auditor Dave Boliek to appoint a 3-2 Republican majority to the board.

That board took office this past week. In their first action, the board’s Republicans voted to oust longtime Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell, who has been a frequent target of GOP criticism since she took the position in 2019.

They replaced her with Sam Hayes, an attorney who worked for Hall and former House Speaker Tim Moore, both of whom are Republicans.

Precedent for challenging results

The precedent set in Griffin’s case may have far more substantial implications than changes to voter ID and registration law.

With their rulings, North Carolina’s appellate courts showed a willingness to cancel votes after the fact.

In her dissenting opinion to the Supreme Court’s order, Justice Anita Earls, a Democrat, warned that their decision could have grave consequences.

“It threatens to make courts, not voters, the arbiter of which candidate wins an election in North Carolina,” she wrote. “It betrays public trust in our elections process, and our courts. From the majority’s disrespect for the will of the people, its blatant legislating from the bench, and its deliberate effort to substitute its choice for that of the voters regarding who sits on our court, I dissent.”

Election protests are not a new phenomenon; in fact, they have been an established part of state law for decades — if not centuries.

But never before has the state seen a challenge quite like this one.

“What made this one so different isn’t that we had a challenge,” Cooper said. “It’s how long the challenge went on and how much the courts were willing to entertain that challenge.”

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