NC Supreme Court temporarily blocks order jeopardizing tens of thousands of votes

The North Carolina Supreme Court temporarily halted an order instructing the State Board of Elections to discard votes and reach out to voters with incomplete registration information.

The North Carolina Supreme Court on Monday temporarily blocked an appeals court ruling that was poised to go into effect for the ongoing election dispute between Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin and Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs.

The appeals court decision last week was set to take effect at 5 p.m. Monday. With less than two hours until the deadline, the conservative majority state Supreme Court stepped in.

Two Republican Court of Appeals Judges, Fred Gore and John Tyson, directed a Wake County Superior Court judge to instruct the State Board of Elections to give more than 61,000 voters 15 business days to address issues on their registration or ballots. And if such changes weren’t resolved by voters, their ballots would be removed from the count of the November 2024 Supreme Court race, where Riggs presently leads Griffin by 734 votes.

An additional 267 ballots were to be swiftly removed from the count over residency concerns. (Anderson Alerts has a list of challenged voters sorted by protest category available here).

Riggs and the State Board of Elections urged the state Supreme Court to step in to prevent the court order from going into effect, warning of the uncertainty it might create. Griffin didn’t oppose the request for a temporary stay.