Timeline: The Last Undecided Election from 2024
Primarily at issue in North Carolina's Supreme Court race: The validity of registration forms for 60,000 absentee voters
The 21st century began in America with an all-time vote-counting fiasco in the 2000 presidential race, which ended in the still-controversial Bush v. Gore court case. Local, state, and national elections have been increasingly marred by mistakes and corruption ever since, resulting in a growing new crisis of voter confidence around “election integrity” issues.
Mainstream news outlets traditionally described “election integrity” dramas as a simplistic partisan phenomenon, under which Republicans use vote challenges to lower turnout and/or disenfranchise minorities, while Democrats toil endlessly to protect voter access and suppress “conspiracy theories” about election results. Reality is more complicated.
Throughout the 2000s, the Democratic Party has also relied heavily on legal challenges to keep the likes of Ralph Nader, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and No Labels from participating in elections — and we may expect more in the future — in an era in which increased turnout looks like it may favor Republicans. More than anything, voters are nervous about results thanks to significant post-Covid changes in how votes are counted, along with a growing list of embarrassing episodes, like New York’s 2021 mayoral election (in which 135,000 test ballots were mis-tabulated), touchscreen errors in local Pennsylvanian elections in 2019, and double-counted votes in New Jersey in 2022, among other results.
Now in North Carolina, the last undecided election of the 2024 cycle is coming down to a high-profile legal challenge over votes. Democrats are calling Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin’s lawsuit challenging last fall’s State Supreme Court vote results an effort to “disenfranchise” 65,000 voters,” and attorneys in both parties are calling on Griffin to drop his case.
Griffin, meanwhile, contends that the state of North Carolina for decades has counted votes of people who lacked ID or failed to fully register, improperly delivering a victory to Justice Alison Riggs. At minimum, the Griffin case offers a window into how unpleasantly approximate voting procedures appear to be in America. The timeline:
Nov. 5, 2024
Republican Jefferson Griffin, a judge on the North Carolina appeals court, appears to win a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court. He has a 10,000-vote lead over Democratic Justice Allison Riggs (appointed to the position in 2023), although mail ballots that arrived Nov. 4-5 still need to be counted, as well as provisional ballots.
State Republican Chairman Jason Simmons declares victory the following day, but the number of remaining mail-in and provisional ballots that still needed to be counted is not known. A Griffin victory would give Republicans a 6-1 majority on the court.
Nov. 11, 2024
The race tightens. Griffin’s lead shrinks to 7,641, and there are still some 15,000 mail-in ballots that need to be counted: 3,700 in Riggs’ home base, Democratic Wake County (Raleigh-Durham area). In addition, there are more than 60,000 provisional ballots that remain uncounted.
Nov. 19, 2024
Griffin requests a recount after Riggs takes a 623-vote lead with nearly all counties reporting. Meanwhile, the Griffin and the North Carolina Republican Party file a lawsuit (see below) against the North Carolina Board of Elections. It says the board failed to provide lists of voters suspected of casting absentee and in-person ballots and those who utilized curbside voting on Election Day. It also asked for information on felony convictions and people who died, and the guidance given to counties dealing with these groups of people. In North Carolina, votes of dead people can be disqualified if cast before Election Day.
Riggs leads by 734 votes by the time the results head to a recount.
Nov. 26, 2024
Voters receive notice that the Griffin campaign is challenging their votes. The Griffin campaign sends a postcard with a QR code notifying them of the challenge. Griffin is challenging the validity of 66,049 votes, including the votes of Riggs’ parents.
The vast majority of challenges, 60,273, according to court records, are based on incomplete registration forms that don’t include a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a social security number, which state law requires. However, “the state elections board had confusing registration forms that didn’t make it explicitly clear what information was mandatory,” writes WFAE politics reporter Steve Harrison in an analysis of the case.
(There are also people with incomplete registrations who voted on Election Day. But Griffin is not challenging those. He is only challenging people who voted by mail and during the state’s in-person early voting period. Those ballots are retrievable; the Election Day ballots are not.)
Griffin had previously made the same argument in August 2024 in a federal lawsuit against the Board of Elections, saying information on registration forms was required by the Help America Vote Act. A Trump-appointed federal judge rejected that argument in October 2024, saying the case belongs in state “common law courts” although “the court is not insensitive to Plaintiffs' concerns about election integrity and voter disenfranchisement. Nor is its decision in any way a stamp of approval on Defendants’ conduct,” the judge wrote. (See decision below.)
Griffin also challenges voters overseas and in the military who didn’t provide photo ID (5,509 voters), which has drawn the ire of veterans in this ad who accuse him of trying to steal the election:
Finally, Griffin challenges the votes of people born abroad who have never lived in North Carolina (267 voters), but whose parents do or had in the past.
December 3, 2024
Griffin requests a second recount before the first recount is complete. The results of the first recount still show Riggs with a 734-vote lead. However, both candidates have now lost 110 votes — which, amazingly, the local media simply notes as if it’s no big deal.
The second recount will be done by hand in 3% of precincts. Griffin must gain 35 votes to trigger a statewide recount by hand.
December 10, 2024
The state Board of Elections says there will not be a third recount after Griffin only gains 14 votes in a partial hand recount. Meanwhile, Griffin files a complaint with the BOE challenging the validity of 60,000 votes. The BOE announces it will have a hearing on Dec. 11.
December 11, 2024
The BOE votes 3-2 along party lines to reject Griffin’s complaint. The three Democrats on the board said voters had done nothing wrong. Here’s an exchange reported by WFAE between the board’s chairman, Alan Hirsch, and Griffin attorney Craig Schauer.
Hirsch: “They all believed that they were registered voters — is that correct?”
Schauer: “I don’t know what the individual voters believed, Mr. Chair.”
Hirsch: “Well, they came to vote, didn’t they?”
December 18, 2024
Griffin asks North Carolina’s Supreme Court to prohibit the BOE from certifying the election.
The petition says the state has required registration forms to provide driver’s licenses or social security numbers since 2004, and that photo ID has been required for absentee voters since 2018. From the petition:
The laws that should have governed this election were, therefore, established long before this election. The State Board simply chose to break the law. But the State Board of Elections is no super-legislature. It doesn’t get to make up its own rules, disregard state statutes, or rewrite the state constitution. Rather, the Board was required to discount votes that were cast in violation of state law.
January 6, 2025
A federal judge — the same judge who ruled against Griffin in October — rules again that the case belongs in state court.
“Should a federal tribunal resolve such a dispute? This court, with due regard for state sovereignty and the independence of states to decide matters of substantial public concern, thinks not,” the decision says. Also from the ruling:
The state Board of Elections appeals the ruling.
January 7, 2025
The North Carolina Supreme Court issues a stay that prohibits the state Board of Elections from certifying the election. It sets an expedited schedule for both sides to file their briefs.
January 22, 2025
The state Supreme Court unanimously rejects Griffin’s petition to overturn the results, but only on procedural grounds. It rules that the matter needs to be in Superior (trial) Court before reaching the Supreme Court. A concurring opinion by three of the justices says Griffin has valid concerns, but that “no court has addressed the merits of petitioner’s claims. Nevertheless, if petitioner seeks to pursue his right to ensure that only lawful votes are counted and that the result of the election is accurate, he needs to follow the statutorily provided procedures.”
February 4, 2025
The federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejects the BOE’s appeal of the Jan. 6 order, ruling that the case belongs in state court.
February 7, 2025
A Superior Court judge in Wake County rules in favor of Riggs. The ruling says the BOE was “not in violation of constitutional provisions, was not in excess of statutory authority or jurisdiction of the agency, was made upon lawful procedure, and was not affected by other error of law."
Griffin, who has not addressed the media appeals the ruling. In the video above, Riggs speaks at an event called “Disenfranchised Disco” a few weeks before a state appeals court hearing.
March 20, 2025
A state appeals panel of two Republicans and one Democrat hears oral arguments in the case. The hearing lasts about 90 minutes (you can watch arguments above). The panel appears split. One Republican judge Fred Gore said he was troubled by the problems with the voter registration forms:
I see why we have this challenge. I’m talking about the fact that there are a certain number of ballots and voters who don’t have proper identification is troubling to me.
A Democratic Judge, Toby Hampson, said he was bothered that Griffin is only challenging absentee/early voting ballots:
How is it not a severe burden to voters if you aren’t challenging in-person voting? You are challenging absentee ballots in certain counties. How does it not impose a significant burden across North Carolina, where we are only looking at certain ballots?
Griffin has declined to publicly address the litigation, but Republican Party Chairman Jason Simmons discusses it in the video above. In the video below, Riggs appears on CBS to discuss the hearing. Both videos are from March 20.
April 4, 2025
Griffin scores a huge court victory. An appeals panel ruled 2-1 in his favor but most of the 66,000-plus voters he’s challenged will have 15 days to cure their ballots.
However, the votes of the 267 overseas voters who have never lived in North Carolina were thrown out. From the court’s decision:
An absent person, who has never lived in North Carolina, cannot make North Carolina their domicile of choice…An emancipated adult affirmatively establishes a domicile of choice by having no intent to return to North Carolina, with residence in a new place, and an intent to make that new place their permanent home. Notably, here, the “Never Resident” voters cannot show an intent to “return” to North Carolina, as they have never resided in North Carolina.
Riggs says she will appeal the decision.
The court’s opinion was critical of local and state boards of elections. It noted that the driver’s license number or last four digits of a social security number have been required on new voter registration forms since 2004:
The Board and the county boards of election are also statutorily required to regularly review, update, and maintain the list of lawfully registered voters. The Board and county boards failed in their duty to contact existing improperly registered voters whose electronic records omitted or did not show a driver’s license number or social security number to cure the information deficiency.
Anyone who registered since the 2004 law but does not have that information on their registration form “is not lawfully registered to vote in North Carolina elections,” the decision says.
In addition, the court ruled that the state’s photo ID requirement also applies to overseas and military voters. Those 5,509 voters will also have 15 days to cure their ballots after being notified by their local boards of election.
A majority of this group of voters and the 60,000-plus invalid registration forms are registered as unaffiliated or Democratic, according to two analysis posted on the substack Anderson Alerts.
The ruling was along party lines. The two judges in the majority are Republicans; the judge in dissent, Toby Hampson, is a Democrat. He wrote:
None of these challenged voters was given any reason to believe their vote would not be counted on election day or included in the final tallies. The diligent actions these voters undertook to exercise their sacred fundamental right to vote was, indeed, the same as every other similarly situated voter exercising their voting right in the very same election. Changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes in an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the Constitution.
A statement from the North Carolina Republican Party says the decision vindicates Griffin.
This decision and order finally holds the N.C. State Board of Elections accountable for their actions and confirms every legal vote will be counted in this contest.
For months, Judge Griffin and the NCGOP have endured baseless attacks and incendiary rhetoric in this matter. Throughout this time, our position has been consistent: when the debate is about the merits, Judge Griffin will prevail in his election integrity concerns.
April 11, 2025
The North Carolina Supreme Court overturns a portion of the appeals court ruling, but rules in favor of Griffin regarding two groups of voters.
Riggs receives the biggest victory — the supreme court rules the votes will stand of roughly 60,000 voters who had incomplete registration forms. Justices criticize the state Board of Elections, saying its “failure to dutifully conform its conduct to the law’s requirements is deeply troubling,” but:
Because the responsibility for the technical defects 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.”
This portion of the ruling was unanimous.
In a 4-2 decision, the court upholds the appeals court’s ruling to toss the votes of 267 overseas voters who have never lived in North Carolina.
The court also upholds the decision that the state’s photo ID requirement also applies to overseas and military voters. However, the court doubles the cure period — from 15 to 30 days — for this group of voters to cure their ballots.
A Republican and Democratic justice issued dissents. The Democrat, Justice Anita Earls, writes that it’s unclear how many of the overseas and military voters are affected. Griffin met a deadline in challenging 1,409 voters in Guilford County (home to Greensboro), but he did not in protesting the votes in five other counties. All six are Democratic counties. Earls writes:
This judicial coup is further exacerbated by the selective nature of the voters Griffin challenges. For military and overseas ballot challenges, he only challenges one or some small number of North Carolina 100 hundred counties. He does not challenge the more than 25,000 identically situated voters across the state who voted under the same preexisting rules, who are not required to clear additional hurdles to have their vote counted, in the same exact race for state Supreme Court. To give him the relief he requests, this Court is ordering the state to violate the voter rights to equal protection under our laws.
Riggs says she’s gratified the court overturned one portion of the appeals court ruling, but that “I will not waiver in my fight to protect the fundamental freedoms for which our military service members and their families have sacrificed so much.”
She files an emergency motion in federal court for an injunction that would prohibit implementation of the state Supreme Court’s modified order.
April 12, 2025
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Myers denies Riggs’ motion and orders the state elections board to carry out the state Supreme Court’s order, but prohibits certification of the results until the district court issues a ruling. Myers sets a briefing schedule. Final briefs are due April 28.
April 13, 2025
A reporter finds there are North Carolina residents among the group of people whose votes were tossed because they had never lived in the state. The state Supreme Court labeled them “never residents” in its ruling.
A report filed for The Assembly and the Anderson Alerts substack finds one person on the list who is a retired UNC-Greensboro professor, has voted in-person eight times and has paid taxes on the same home since 2003.
Another “never resident” voter runs a drone photography business in the state.
The story says several other voters have been identified who “appear to have, in fact, lived in North Carolina.”
The “never residents” group has been listed as being 267 voters, but the number in the story is lowered to 260 because a few names are listed more than once.
April 14, 2025
The Anderson Alerts Substack now reports at least 16 people on the list of “never residents” actually have or do live in North Carolina, “with some having spent their entire childhood in North Carolina, continuing to pay property taxes or working in the state.” The votes of all of these people have been disqualified.
As someone who lives in NC, all I can say is ‘what a complete shit show.’
We have the ability to shoot rockets into space and then have them return and be caught in a gigantic pair of needle nose pliers, but for some strange reason we’re unable to register voters and manage said voters on a Blockchain, have single day voting and count results by that midnight.
This bullshit is clearly all by design.
Big picture thought: I think Democrats gave up on stealing the POTUS election. So they focused on stealing state and local races. I think that accounts for much of the strangeness in a number of the Senate and House elections.
I wrote on some of that back in November:
https://markmarshall.substack.com/p/after-the-celebration-why-is-the