NC Justice Allison Riggs vows to fight for military and overseas votes
The day after the state Supreme Court put conditions on military and overseas votes counting in her race, Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs said she is eager to take the fight over those votes to federal court.
'I was elected to keep my seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court, and I am committed to fighting tirelessly to ensure that the will of North Carolina voters is respected,' Riggs told an audience at NC Central University's law school on Saturday. 'The eyes of the country are on the people of this state,' she said. 'Because we are people of resilience, we are people of community, we're going to show the country what it looks like to fight in tough times.'
Riggs was the final speaker at the 'In Our Court' conference, sponsored by Common Cause NC, the American Constitution Society, Emancipate NC, Democracy NC, and about a half dozen other groups.
On Friday, a majority on the state Supreme Court decided that thousands of absentee ballots cast by members of the military and overseas voters should have included their photo IDs. The court said those voters would have 30 days to provide IDs after the state Board of Elections mails notices. People who don't provide ID would have their votes in the state Supreme Court election thrown out.
The court majority decided a few hundred votes from people who live overseas and are connected to the state through their parents should be erased from the Supreme Court race total.
Riggs, the Democratic incumbent, leads Republican challenger Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes. Her lead in last November's election has been confirmed in two recounts. In an effort to unseat her, Griffin sued the state Board of Elections to have more than 60,000 votes tossed out. Most of the voter challenges were based on Griffin's claims of incomplete registrations.
A Supreme Court's 4-2 majority reduced the votes in jeopardy to those cast by military and overseas absentee voters.
Riggs immediately asked federal District Judge Richard Myers for a preliminary injunction, basically to freeze action in case.
Myers on Saturday ordered the elections board to follow the state court's instructions for notifying voters what they have to do to have their votes count, but not to certify the election until hearing more from the court.
The board is to tell Myers by Tuesday how many voters could be affected and which counties they're in. Myers also set a schedule for written arguments.
The exact number of overseas and military voters affected is unclear. In her dissent, Justice Anita Earls wrote that at least 2,000 to 7,000 military and overseas voters could be affected. Those challenged military and overseas votes could be limited to Guilford County or could include overseas votes from a handful of other heavily Democratic counties Griffin added to his protest.
'They may be military members who have been serving on battlefronts in war zones,' Riggs said Saturday. 'They are foreign service officers who are working to make this whole entire world a safer place to live,' she said.
The state's military and overseas voting law is modeled after a federal law meant to encourage service people to vote. These voters were told they did not need to include photo ID with their ballots. Most use an electronic portal that does not allow voters to submit a photo. The majority on the Supreme Court said the state Board should have required overseas voters to supply photo ID.
While Riggs has focused her comments on military voters who may be disenfranchised, the challenged group also includes a high proportion of college-aged voters.
Griffin has included in his challenge overseas voters from Durham, Forsyth, Buncombe, and Guilford — all counties with significant student populations. The challenged overseas voters in these are five times more likely to be Democrats, said Gunther Peck, founder and co-director of the Student Voting Rights Lab at Duke and NC Central universities. The lab's analysis found that challenged voters in this group are 4.6 times more likely to be between the ages of 18 and 25 than over the age of 65.
More than 260 Duke students living aboard and voted absentee had their votes challenged, Peck said.
Ann Webb, Common Cause NC policy director, said there are still questions the federal court can decide. A big one is whether it's fair to single out military and overseas voters from a select group of counties.
The 'gaping question' of which counties are supposed to be included needs to be resolved, Webb said, and may end up back in state court.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Plain Township trustees agreed to put police levy renewal on Nov. 4 ballot
PLAIN TWP. − Township trustees in a special meeting the afternoon of Aug. 1 approved placing a five-year renewal of a 4.25-mill policy levy on the Nov. 4 ballot. A change in state law that took effect in April prompted the board to take action for a second time. The new law requires the amount of money estimated to be raised by the levy to be expressed in an exact amount in the resolution and on the ballot rather than an amount rounded to the nearest one thousand. The renewal levy is not a tax increase. If approved by voters, the township would continue to collect for another five years from 2027 to 2031 the $94 a year per $100,000 in valuation that's being collected now. The police levy funds payments to the Stark County Sheriff's office to provide additional police services in the township under a contract. The trustees approved May 13 placing the renewal levy on the ballot. But it said the estimated amount the levy would raise was $3,771,000 a year. On July 18, the Ohio Secretary of State's office issued an advisory, informed all 88 county boards of education about the change in state law regarding the estimated revenue amount in ballot language in levies. The Stark County Board of Elections and Stark County Prosecutor's office out of caution advised the trustees to vote again on placing the renewal police levy on the ballot, with revenue estimated at $3,771,358. The filing deadline to place levies on the ballot is 4 p.m. Aug. 6. Voters first approved the levy in 2016 to allow for the hiring of 10 more sheriff's deputies to serve the township. About 62% of voters in November 2020 approved a five-year replacement 4.25-mill police levy that increased the cost per $100,000 in valuation from $134 to $148.75 a year. Due to new construction in the township, the cost is now about $94 per $100,000 in valuation. Campbell said the Stark County sheriff's office felt the revenue from a capped renewal levy would be enough through 2031. o address the change in state law, Bethlehem Township trustees had to re-pass a six-year, 1.5-mill road levy renewal. And Waynesburg Council had to approve again a 2-mill general expense levy renewal, the Stark County Auditor's office said. Reach Robert at This article originally appeared on The Repository: Plain Township Trustees place police levy on ballot a second time Solve the daily Crossword
Buzz Feed
18 minutes ago
- Buzz Feed
Marjorie Taylor Greene Just Dropped A Truth Bomb About The Republican Party
Marjorie Taylor Greene is NOT happy with the Republican Party. She was pissed about the attack on Iran. She broke ranks with Republicans and called the crisis in Gaza a "genocide." And she won't stop talking about how Republicans won't deal with the national debt. Now, she's talking about breaking up with the Republican Party. In an interview with the Daily Mail, the Congress member said: "I don't know if the Republican Party is leaving me, or if I'm kind of not relating to Republican Party as much anymore. I don't know which one it is." She also said: "I think the Republican Party has turned its back on America First and the workers and just regular Americans." And finally, she criticized the way Republicans treat women: "I think there's other women in our party that are really sick and tired of the way men treat Republican women." Those anti-GOP quotes are going viral in a tweet by Brian Tyler Cohen: People in the replies are, like, duh: "What if she switches parties and becomes a normie dem," one person asked. "I really never thought i'd see that day she was saying shit like this and uttering the word 'genocide'…" another person said in disbelief. And then the Lincoln Project invited her to the party: "Welcome to the resistance, Marge." As this person said, "Trumps presidency is so goddamn bad that it wokeified marjorie taylor green."
USA Today
18 minutes ago
- USA Today
Texas Hold 'em: Gov. Abbott threatens legal action for absent Dems
After more than 50 Democrats fled the state amid a redistricting battle, Greg Abbott gave them an ultimatum and deadline to return to Austin. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threatened more than 50 Democrats with legal action and removal from the state legislature after the lawmakers fled the Lone Star State en masse Aug. 3 amid a heated redistricting battle. At President Donald Trump's urging, Texas Republicans have proposed a revised congressional map that could give the party a leg up in next year's midterm elections and the ability to flip as many as five U.S. House seats. Democrats in the state, limited by their minority position, employed one of their few viable methods of protest by leaving Texas to break necessary quorum. Many traveled to Illinois, greeted by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, while other, smaller groups landed in Boston, Massachusetts and Albany, New York. In a memo late Sunday evening, Abbott said he would expel any Democrat who was not back in Austin by the time the legislature reconvened Aug. 4 at 3 p.m. CT. "Democrats hatched a deliberate plan not to show up for work, for the specific purpose of abdicating the duties of their office and thwarting the chamber's business," the governor wrote. "That amounts to an abandonment or forfeiture of an elected state office." Abbott based his ultimatum on a 2021 nonbinding opinion from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. In it, Paxton asserts that district courts could rule to remove a lawmaker who has left in order to break quorum, leaving a vacancy that Abbott would then be able to fill. The absent Democrats are already facing consequences in the form of a $500 per day fine for being out of state. The penalty was put in place after state Democrats in 2021 fled in order to protest new voting restrictions and halted operations for 38 days. Deep-pocketed donors and officials on the left − including Pritzker, a billionaire, and Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a congressional Texan and star fundraiser − have offered to assist Texas Democrats. Abbott, in his note, accused the state lawmakers of violating bribery laws by accepting the support. "In addition to abandoning their offices, these legislators may also have committed felonies," Abbott wrote. "I will use my full extradition authority to demand the return to Texas of any potential out-of-state felons." Texas Democrats say they are not deterred by the governor's warnings. At a press conference with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, state Rep. Jolanda Jones, a Democrat from Houston and an attorney, said Abbott was "making up" a threat he could not follow through on. "He's going to come get us how?" Jones added. "Let me be clear − he's putting up smoke and mirrors."
