More than 61,000 voters challenged by NC Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin have 15 business days to prove their eligibility, or have their ballots removed from the count in Griffin’s 2024 bid to unseat Justice Allison Riggs, according to a Friday ruling from a three-judge panel of the NC Court of Appeals. 

After all votes were tallied in November, the contest came down to 734 votes, with incumbent Riggs, a Democrat, in the lead. Soon thereafter, Griffin, a Republican Court of Appeals judge, asked for recounts and filed election protests. 

The recounts maintained Rigg’s lead, while the State Board of Elections dismissed the protests. 

Since then, Griffin’s legal challenges and countering lawsuits from Riggs have made their way through state and federal courts on their path to a delayed resolution while Riggs retains her seat. 

Friday, the most significant decision in the case came down from two Republican justices on the North Carolina Court of Appeals. In a 2-1 decision from the panel, the court declared that Griffin’s protests were valid.  

Incomplete voter registrations

The panel majority ruled that the largest portion of challenged voters, those who have “incomplete voter registrations” without a driver’s license or Social Security number included in their elections records, are ineligible to vote because they were not registered to vote correctly.

The blame lies squarely on the State Boards of Elections, which did not update voter registration form to make that information required in accordance with the federal Help America Vote Act, the panel majority opinion states. 

Once the issue was identified in 2023, the State Board issued a new registration form, but didn’t go back and contact registrants who didn’t list a driver’s license or Social Security number, or check a box saying they had neither to be assigned a unique identification number. 

Now, the appellate court panel says those voters are ineligible. The majority emphasized that the court has the right to remove ballots cast by these voters from the count, but is choosing not to do so immediately. 

Instead, they are returning the case to the Wake County Superior Court, and instructing them to tell the State Board to contact impacted voters to provide them an opportunity to fill in the missing information. If voters do so within 15 business days of notification, their votes will count. If not, they will be removed from the count for the Supreme Court race, but not other races. 

Overseas and military photo ID

The court panel ruled similarly on Griffin’s second protest, which challenged overseas and military voters who did not provide photo identification with their absentee ballots. 

During legal proceedings, the State Board has argued that under the state’s Uniform Military and Overseas Voters Act, overseas and military voters are exempt from the voter ID requirement. UMOVA is contained in a separate statute from the one including photo ID requirements, and the Board argued that was intentional. 

The appellate court panel disagreed. It ruled that the two statutes were intended to be read together, and that all voters are subject to the photo ID requirement. 

Again, implicated voters have 15 business days to provide photo identification or an exception form, or be removed from the count. 

In his dissent, Judge Toby Hampson, the loan Democrat on the panel, said providing time to fix these issues does not make up for the fact that impacted voters followed the rules available to them at the time. 

“The proposition that a significant portion of these 61,682 voters will receive notice and timely take curative measures is a fiction that does not disguise the act of mass disenfranchisement the majority’s decision represents,” Hampson wrote. 

Panel nixes ‘Never Residents’

North Carolina law includes an exception to the state constitution’s residency requirement for a small subset of voters labeled “Never Residents:” overseas U.S. citizens who were born outside the country and whose parents or legal guardians’ last residence was North Carolina. 

Friday, the appellate court ruled that statute ran afoul of the state Constitution, and voided the votes of Never Residents. 

Panel dissent and equal protection issues 

Hampson’s dissent had a few arguments that may be seen again in future litigation. 

First, he questioned the timing of Griffin’s protests. The statutes and Board interpretations that are being challenged have been in existence for several election cycles. 

The majority declared that eligibility is determined as of Election Day, Hampson noted. 

“Despite professing this basic tenet, the majority changes the rules of the 2024 election — and only for one race — months after election day,” he wrote. “It does so even though there is no actual showing or forecast that any challenged voter was not registered or otherwise unqualified to vote.”

Second, Hampson objected to which votes are being challenged. All protests include only early and absentee voters, since that was the information Griffin had available at the time he filed them.

Additionally, the overseas and military photo ID protest only includes Guilford County ballots. 

“Each of these voters is at risk of being disenfranchised while similarly-situated voters are not, simply because of the county in which they reside, when they cast their ballot, or their physical location,” Hampson wrote. 

What’s next after appeals panel? 

The appellate decision may be key in determining the ultimate outcome of the race. 

Riggs has already declared her intention to appeal the decision to the North Carolina Supreme Court, calling it a “deeply misinformed decision that threatens to disenfranchise more than 65,000 lawful voters and sets a dangerous precedent, allowing disappointed politicians to thwart the will of the people.”

However, if the North Carolina Supreme Court comes to a very possible 3-3 tie, the appellate court’s decision would be the one that stands. Either way, if the state high court fails to take the case or acts to leave the panel’s ruling in place, Riggs’ legal team has indicated it will likely return the case to the federal courts on equal protection grounds. 

The State Board also issued a statement saying that they would comply with the order, if it goes into effect.

“Regardless of the ultimate outcome of this ongoing legal dispute, any voter who is concerned that their voter registration information is incomplete or is not up to date should submit an updated voter registration form,” the statement read. 

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin was less neutral. 

“This partisan decision has no legal basis and is an all-out assault on our democracy and the basic premise that voters decide who wins their elections, not the courts,” he said in a statement. “If upheld, this could allow politicians across the country to overturn the will of the people.”

While Griffin has stayed mum since November, North Carolina Republican Chairman Jason Simmons called the ruling a “victory for the rule of law and election integrity” in a social media post. 

“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,” he wrote. 

Related

(TNS) — A N.C. Senate bill that would review state agency performance and staffing levels, relying in part on the use of artificial intelligence, cleared its first committee step Wednesday.

Senate Bill 474, titled “The DAVE Act,” was recommended by the Senate Regulatory Reform committee after nearly 30 minutes of at times contentious debate.

Although the bill is being fast-tracked to gatekeeper Rules and Operations committee, the legislation is expected to be inserted into the 2025-26 state budget bill to fund additional state Auditor office job positions.

Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, is in the rare role of being a primary bill sponsor.

According to a news release from Berger’s office, the legislation is designed to “get a complete picture” of how state agencies are utilizing taxpayer funds “and determine if the agency should continue to exist.”

The acronym DAVE stands for Division of Accountability, Value and Efficiency, which would be housed in the State Auditor’s office of Republican Dave Boliek.

Bill sponsors say the key areas for state agency review — so far — includes: amounts spent, including the entities receiving funds and the intended purpose of the amounts spent; effectiveness of any amount spent in achieving the intended purpose of that spending; and duplicative spending.

Each agency is to report all job positions that have been vacant for six months or more. Agency reports would have an Oct. 1 filing deadline.

SB474 was amended to establish a sunset that was not specified, but to occur after the 2028 general election, and allow Boliek to request annual reports.

Berger said SB474 “facilitates the auditor’s ability to move forward on examining how monies that are appropriated by the General Assembly … are actually deployed … effectively deployed and whether or not there’s a failure on the part of an executive agency to utilize the funds as directed by the legislature.”

The bill is likely to join the growing list of Republican-sponsored bills that may serve as the first test of Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s ability to sustain a veto vote.

Senate Republicans hold a 30-20 supermajority that gives them the votes to override a Stein veto. However, House Republicans are one vote shy of a supermajority at 71-49.

Boliek, in his first term as auditor, said SB474 empowers the state Auditor’s Office “to do that what we already have the authority to do” in terms of auditing for operational, funding and overall program efficiency.”

Boliek said the proposed objectives of SB474 should draw bipartisan support.

“What this bill does is it puts together the legislature, the executive branch and the state Auditor’s Office,” Boliek said.

“It is designed to do better government, a date-centered approach that gets real, impactful results.”

Boliek claimed SB474 is needed in part because previous state auditors provided “bread and butter financial audits that are a 30,000-foot views that does not — quite frankly — give members of this body the type of information you need and you expect … to make competent, judgmental decisions as they run their agencies.

“My commitment is to do this in a nonpartisan way that’s data centric. … not emotion. The proof will be in the pudding.”

Boliek said the expanded use of artificial intelligence is warranted “because we’ve got to start somewhere in the state of North Carolina because it’s coming, and there’s no better place than the state Auditor’s Office to get started with that.”

Several Senate Democratic committee members critical of SB474 claimed Senate GOP leaders want to establish a N.C. version of the controversial federal DOGE initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk.

They expressed concerns that state departments and agencies, already are dealing with staffing vacancies reaching 20% to 25%, could have their workforce experience more cuts based on assessments from artificial intelligence algorithms.

Sen. Caleb Theodros, D-Mecklenburg, said there needs to be firm restraints and transparency on the use of artificial intelligence in evaluating the performance of agencies and their employees.

Berger said legislators will employ artificial intelligence as a tool in determining funding appropriation levels and whether state funds are being wasted or not.

“Your comments point out exactly why we need something like this,” Berger said.

Sen. Lisa Grafstein, D-Wake, said the auditor’s office focuses on accounting functions, and is not meant to be a program evaluator of the work of state employees and “whether they are necessary.”

“I think we are getting really close to the idea that we’re demonizing state employees who are trying to do their jobs, and folks who are trying to make our communities better.”

Sen. Sophia Chitlik, D-Durham, said moving forward with SB474 is harmful when state government is struggling to fill about 14,000 job vacancies, in part because of the pay scale compared with the private sector.

“Behind every one of these jobs there is a reason for them, a community need,” Chitlik said.

“It strikes me as actually very inefficient to potentially leave it up to AI to eliminate them because we can’t fill them.”

Chitlik said the DOGE initiative is putting about 35,000 federal jobs in N.C. at risk of elimination.

She cited as an example the elimination of a UNC Health laboratory workforce dedicated to studying youth vaping “because their NIH (National Institutes of Health) grant had the word equity in it.”

“We do not need to look any further than our state for examples of what happens when you let an algorithm take control of our workplace,” she said.

Berger responded by saying Boliek “has no authority to discharge anyone. He has the authority to identify problems in any discharge.”

“Any elimination of positions would be left up to the General Assembly.”

Sen. Woodson Bradley, D-Mecklenburg, said it is critical that whatever authority that DAVE is given by the legislature has bipartisan support.

“We can’t let this infect the entire (state) budget, not let it hurt people with zero accountability,” she said.

Meanwhile, public speakers called out Senate Republican leadership for what they termed hypocrisy.

They said the call for more stringent evaluations of how government agencies operate runs counter to legislators sticking into the 2023 state budget bill language that allows legislators to determine whether documents are public records, shield them from public release and destroy them if they choose.

© 2025 the News & Record (Greensboro, N.C.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

NEW BERN, N.C. (WITN) – After a string of shootings in the past few weeks in New Bern, it’s drawing attention to the access young people have to guns.

NC S.A.F.E., with the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NCDPS), shared data on social media from a report that found nearly 30% of high schoolers within the state say they could access a loaded weapon within an hour without permission, leaving one parent in New Bern worried.

“That makes me want to homeschool my child whenever she’s even able to go to school. I mean, hearing about all of the shootings and everything is really concerning,” says New Bern resident Alexis Branham.

Even for the New Bern Police Department, hearing the data came as a shock.

“It’s definitely a percentage too high in my opinion,” says SGT. Joseph Leggett.

It’s adding another layer of concern surrounding young people and their access to guns, a topic taking center stage after five shootings in the past three weeks in New Bern.

Police say they are mostly involved people between the ages of 15 to 25.

“We have seen juveniles and teenagers in possession of firearms. Most of the time, they’re getting them because they’re not secured or locked,” says SGT. Leggett.

New Bern Police say that gun owners, especially those who are parents, should safely store their guns by using safes or gun locks.

LazyK Cartridge Company gun store manager Kenneth Lipscomb says they try to help people who are turned away by the cost of gun storage by giving away gun locks to promote gun safety.

“Making sure that they [gun owners] understand that these are yours, not theirs. Once again, if they’re yours, have them locked up in a place that they can not access. When you have it out freely and about and anyone can access it, you’re not showing that it’s yours,” says Lipscomb.

More than 60,000 gun locks were given away in 2024 by the NCDPS to promote gun safety.

New Bern Police say they will be holding a press conference Friday to discuss the issues. WITN will be present and will bring you the latest.

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