‘The game is done’: Judge rejects GOP effort to overturn North Carolina Supreme Court race

A long and drawn-out legal fight over North Carolina’s Supreme Court race ended when a federal judge firmly rejected a Republican effort to throw out the election results. The case involved Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs facing off against Republican challenger Judge Jefferson Griffin and focused on disputes over thousands of ballots cast in the November 2024 election.

As reported by The Guardian, Riggs originally won by a slim margin of 734 votes, a result confirmed by two recounts. However, Griffin disputed the outcome and launched a lengthy legal challenge that moved through both state and federal courts. Griffin’s initial challenge targeted around 65,000 ballots, claiming various problems with voter eligibility.

In a 68-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Richard Myers II, who was appointed by President Trump, ultimately rejected Griffin’s challenge. Judge Myers stressed the importance of setting election rules in advance, saying that changing them after the election, especially in a way that unfairly targeted certain voters, was wrong.

Federal judge ends North Carolina voting debate

A large part of Griffin’s argument centered on military and overseas ballots, where he claimed voters had not provided the required photo ID or ID exception forms, even though they were exempt from this rule under pre-election guidelines.

He also disputed nearly 300 ballots from people he called “Never Residents”—individuals who had never lived in North Carolina but were registered to vote there under a 2011 state law. At first, the North Carolina Supreme Court partially agreed with Griffin, ruling that military and overseas ballots needed to be verified and that votes from “Never Residents” should not count. This decision led Justice Riggs, who had stepped aside from the state-level case, to appeal to federal court.

Myers ruled that canceling military and overseas ballots after the fact violated due process rights and that blocking “Never Residents” from voting without giving them a chance to defend their status unfairly restricted their right to vote. The judge’s decision reinforced that election rules must be applied fairly going forward, not changed after the fact to take away votes from specific groups.

Judge Myers’s ruling ordered the North Carolina Board of Elections to certify the original results, confirming Riggs’s win. However, he gave Griffin seven days to appeal the decision to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, leaving the door open for more legal action. The number of ballots affected by Griffin’s challenge changed at different stages of the case, with estimates ranging from about 1,675 to 7,000 ballots depending on when the challenge was being reviewed.

Griffin’s challenges and the courts’ initial openness to hearing them might set a precedent for similar attempts to overturn election results through lawsuits after voting ends. The case shows how close elections could lead to months of legal battles, which could hurt public trust in the fairness of the voting process.