In the face of election denial in North Carolina, the judiciary upholds democracy

Yahoo

25-05-2025

State Supreme Court Justice takes the oath of office in the old North Carolina House chamber on May 13, 2025. (Photo: Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline)
It took six months, but the race for the North Carolina Supreme Court is finally over. The rules of the game held – just as they did following the 2020 election – and the winner is now in office.
That's a win for democracy.
And we owe that win in large part to an exceptionally strong ruling from Trump-appointed judge Richard E. Myers II, chief judge of the Eastern District of North Carolina.
While other branches might be absent (Congress), or ambivalent on whether or not it has to follow the Constitution (Executive), the federal judiciary continues to hold the line.
North Carolina is one of seven states that has partisan elections for its judges. In the November 2024 election for one of North Carolina's Supreme Court seats, Democrat Allison Riggs defeated Republican Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes. Out of 5,540,090 votes. Griffin challenged the results in court, as is his right.
Included in Griffin's challenges were attempts to retroactively challenge the state's election laws, and then use the new understanding of the law to throw out 60,000 presumptively-valid votes. All based in election denial conspiracies.
Such an effort violates two important principles of how our elections are run: 1) You can't change the rules of the game after the game, and 2) You can't punish voters for following the rules as they were understood at the time.
These principles are what kept Al Gore from invalidating 25,000 likely-Republican votes in Florida in the 2000 presidential election, and they're what allow for finality in election results.
The North Carolina Court of Appeals and the North Carolina Supreme Court shocked the election community by partially indulging Griffin's after-the-fact challenges. They showed they were willing to set a dangerous precedent of legitimizing false claims of voter fraud, especially in close margin races.
If the North Carolina Supreme Court's decision had held, and if it had gained popularity in other state courts, then we would have been in a world of trouble for 2026. Elections would drag on for months.
For example, if I, in Arizona, narrowly lost an election, but then challenged the legality of mail balloting, then that legal theory would have to be fully litigated before calling an end to the election. Despite the fact that I could have challenged the legality of mail voting before the election.
Imagine if the election in dispute had been a seat in Congress. Or if the partisan balance of Congress had only been divided by one vote. Would we have been waiting until May to seat the Speaker of the House?
Maybe then it would've gotten more attention nationally. It flew largely under the radar for many Americans. And who can blame them? Democracy is under attack from so many angles, who can keep up?
The truth is, election denial was alive and well in North Carolina this election cycle. But ultimately, the federal courts stepped in and settled the race once and for all.
Judge Myers didn't hesitate to rebuke the problematic nature of such an approach. He wrote: 'A post-election change of practice that results in the discarding of votes is abominable under the Constitution of the United States.'
Griffin ultimately called off the fight and conceded to Riggs, allowing her to, finally, be sworn in to a new term on the North Carolina Supreme Court.
As long as I wasn't one of the candidates, nor a North Carolina citizen looking for finality, there's a silver lining. The ruling provided a persuasive refresher on election law for judges. It came from the chief judge of a district. It came from a Republican-appointed judge. It came from a Trump-appointed judge.
Don't get me wrong. The lawsuit threatened to undermine the legitimacy of our election system and silence the eligible voters. It's going to take time for pro-democracy officials in North Carolina, and across our country, to rebuild trust in our election system.
We have the federal courts to thank for keeping our election system free, fair, and secure this cycle. I firmly believe that almost all federal judges consistently do the right thing according to fact and law, regardless of their politics. But for those who think the judiciary is just 'politics in robes,' we couldn't have asked for a better ambassador for election-law-sanity than we got in this federal court.
As I have said many times over the past few months, thank goodness for our federal judiciary, one which continues to be the envy of the world.