by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News April 15, 2025

North Carolina’s state Supreme Court has ruled that some 60,000 ballots lacking proper identification will count in a race for a seat on its own bench.

In a unanimous decision on Friday, the court said that the votes, challenged by Republican candidate and appellate Judge Jefferson Griffin, should remain in the count for the vote total.

Democrat Allison Riggs leads the state Supreme Court race by about 700 votes over Republican Jefferson Griffin.

In a 4-2 split, the court ruled that another roughly 5,500 overseas voters who did not provide identification would be allowed 30 days to fix their ballots, while another 267 voters who have never resided in North Carolina would have their votes removed.

Griffin’s race against incumbent Democrat Justice Allison Riggs, who is recused, is the last in the country to be decided from the Nov. 5, 2024, general election.

On election night, Griffin was winning by about 10,000 votes, but over the following nine days, overseas and provisional ballots started trickling in to give Riggs a 734-vote lead.

The ballots Griffin challenged were cast by voters who had not, in accordance with state law, provided a driver’s license or last four digits of a Social Security number upon registering to vote or had not provided a photo ID upon casting their ballot as required in the state.

“The discrepancy with incomplete registrations occurred because the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE), currently run by Democrats, failed their duty to ensure that citizens in the state were properly registered because it did not adequately inform them the identification was required,” Breccan F. Thies wrote for The Federalist.

The state Supreme Court’s decision said that the discrepancy was due to the NCSBE and not the voters.

“To the extent that the registrations of voters in the first category are incomplete, the Board is primarily, if not totally, responsible,” the decision states. And while the NCSBE learned of the issue in 2023, well before the 2024 election, the court noted it “did nothing, however, to ensure that any past violations were remedied.”

“The board’s inattention and failure to dutifully conform its conduct to the law’s requirements is deeply troubling,” the opinion continued. “Nevertheless, our precedent on this issue is clear. Because the responsibility for the technical defects in the voters’ registration rests with the Board and not the voters, the wholesale voiding of ballots cast by individuals who subsequently proved their identity to the Board by complying with the voter identification law would undermine the principle that ‘this is a government of the people, in which the will of the people — the majority — legally expressed, must govern.’ ”

Related: Something’s screwy in NC: Questions about voting data anomalies get no answers, December 19, 2024

A lower court decision earlier this month would have required all of the in-state and overseas voters whose ballots were contested to cure their registrations, while still tossing the never resided voters. The high court decided something of a middle route, allowing the lion’s share of the ballots to count despite their incomplete registrations.

During the legal battles, Riggs remains on the state’s high court, and Griffin remains in his seat on the appellate court.

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  000 votes without proper ID to count in high court election, NC Supreme Court allows 60, WorldTribune.com