Before the sun rose on a chilly Tuesday, a group gathered in Raleigh’s Bicentennial Park to read 60,000 names. From 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., various speakers took turns at a podium, aptly facing away from the North Carolina Supreme Court. Members of the political Can’t Win Victory Fund made their way through lists of voters whose ballots are being protested by Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin — the apparent runner-up in his race against Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs for a seat on the state’s highest court.
Griffin is asking courts to remove these voters from final election tallies in an attempt to flip the political race in his favor after two recounts have him behind by just 734 votes. In his protests, he argues that many of these people may be ineligible to vote, either because they improperly registered or because the State Board of Elections allowed them to cast their ballot in contradiction to North Carolina law.
The State Board, Riggs and other detractors argue that retroactively removing residents who cast their ballots would violate their right to vote and democracy itself.
Claudia Mixon, who attended the event with her mother and sister, said the length of the list should help put the extent of the protests in perspective and that Griffin and his fellow Republicans “should accept their loss.”
“It’s a lot of people’s votes that just are not gonna matter,” Mixon said. “It’s against democracy to vote and then have your vote just be thrown out because the other party lost.”
Political power play
Both supporters and critics of Griffin’s protests point to election integrity as their primary motivation to win the legal battle.
But often lost in the details is a more specific, political goal: to secure control of the state Supreme Court by 2030, when the next U.S. Census occurs. After that, the subsequent redistricting process begins.
The court’s Republicans now hold a 5-2 majority, with Riggs and fellow Democratic Justice Anita Earls making up the political party minority. If Griffin successfully throws out votes and flips the race, the GOP would hold an overwhelming 6-1 partisan advantage.
Often, North Carolina is home to redistricting and gerrymandering fights that make their way through the courts. The state Supreme Court may very well be the key decision maker in nearly inevitable redistricting lawsuits.
“We have a path to being able to get fair maps in North Carolina. The path goes directly through the state Supreme Court,” Can’t Win Victory Fund organizer Beth Kendall said. “We need to win this race. We need to win Anita Earl’s race in 2026 and then we need to flip the court back to Democratic control in 2028.”
How we got here
The State Board of Elections messed up. Griffin wants 60,000 voters to pay for it.
Griffin’s primary protest boils down to an issue with North Carolina’s voter registration form that went unchecked for years.
The form did not clarify that registrants must provide either a driver’s license or the last four digits of their social security number to properly register to vote. Registrants who lack both may check a box indicating so, and bring additional identifying documents the first time they cast a ballot.
Before the State Board caught its mistake, 225,000 voters were processed without one of the two requirements. A little more than 60,000 of them cast votes in the 2024 general election.
Griffin wants them out of the count.
He also wants smaller groups of voters removed — 267 who are U.S. citizens but have never lived in North Carolina and 5,509 from overseas who did not attach photo identification to their absentee ballots. Members of those groups have voted under the State Board’s interpretation of North Carolina law for years.
In the months preceding the election, Republicans sued the board over these issues. Those suits were dismissed or postponed until after the 2024 election. Griffin’s protests attempted to revive them.
The State Board of Elections dismissed Griffin’s protests on substantive and procedural grounds.
Griffin appealed that decision directly to the N.C. Supreme Court, asking to stop election certification in his race until a court could rule on the merits.
The court obliged. Pending a federal appellate court decision on whether the case should be heard in state or federal court, the state Supreme Court will decide whether any ballots should be removed from the count.
The latest
Griffin asked the court to focus on overseas voters who did not provide photo identification before addressing the other protests.
If the case ends up at the state Supreme Court, Riggs will recuse herself.
For Griffin to succeed, four of the remaining six justices would have to agree to grant Griffin’s wish to remove voters from the final election tally. In the case of a 3-3 deadlock, the lower decision stands — in this case, the State Board’s dismissal. The State Board would then likely certify the election as it stands, with Riggs winning re-election.
Earls and Republican Justice Richard Dietz dissented to the court’s temporary election certification stay and are likely to oppose Griffin’s motion. It’s unclear how the others may decide.
‘Moral decision’
Terry Mahaffey, an Apex Town Council member, has created an online tool that makes it easier for people to determine whether their vote is being challenged.
Common Cause North Carolina, a left-leaning grassroots organization, has shared that tool with the public, and is advertising on mobile billboards across Raleigh to spread awareness of Griffin’s protests.
Common Cause is also advertising on mobile billboards in other parts of Wake County and will continue to do so until Griffin concedes, campaigns manager Gino Nuzzolillo said. The billboards include a link, and several hundred people have added their names to a petition against Griffin’s protests since the campaign began.
The N.C. Supreme Court has a “moral decision” to make, Nuzzolillo said. Whoever wins this and upcoming Supreme Court races will “get to determine who has legislative majorities for the next decade and beyond.”
“So every single race, every single contest for that court, is about nothing less than who controls the future of political power in the state. And it’s not about Democrats or Republicans. It’s about the people of North Carolina. ... Every aspect of our daily lives can be shaped by this court, one way or another,” he said.

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