"Still angry": Voters say they won't forget that the North Carolina GOP tried to trash their ballots

Copland Rudolph is glad that the North Carolina Supreme Court election challenge is finally over. Like tens of thousands of others swept up in the contentious litigation, she spent some six months reeling over whether her vote would count or Republican Appellate Court Judge Jefferson Griffin would succeed and have it thrown out. But even though his effort ultimately failed, she told Salon she isn’t feeling too comforted. 

“I wish it felt like more of a relief than it does, honestly, because I know it's a temporary relief,” the Asheville resident said in a phone interview, having previously told Salon that her ballot was challenged despite her having a complete voter registration. “I am still angry [about] the amount of energy, time, money that Jefferson Griffin siphoned from this state, and particularly this community, with his own self-interest centered.”

“I hope he recognizes the other side: that he has fired up women voters in this state — that we're done. We're done with the nonsense,” she added.

Earlier this month, the North Carolina Supreme Court election challenge ended with a concession from Griffin, who initially asked the courts to throw out more than 65,000 votes he claimed were invalid over allegedly incomplete voter registrations. He lost the November race to incumbent Justice Allison Riggs, a Democrat, by just 734 points, a margin twice confirmed by recounts. As the litigation proceeded, the number of votes challenged was reduced to about 1,600 North Carolinians, but a federal judge ultimately ruled earlier this month that none of their votes could be discounted. 

“Depriving voters of a fundamental right would result in significant hardship,” U.S. District Judge Richard Myers wrote in his ruling. “Giving effect to the will of the voters would result in no corresponding hardship for Judge Griffin. And there is a tremendous public interest in safeguarding ‘the integrity of our electoral processes,’ which ‘is essential to the functioning of our participatory democracy.’”

Griffin’s petitions against the North Carolina Board of Elections claimed that the board improperly and unlawfully counted the votes from three groups of people: More than 60,000 votes, he alleged, were cast by voters who did not provide or were not asked to provide identification numbers on their voter registrations; another 5,500 absentee votes came from overseas and military voters who failed to include a photo ID, he argued; while another 200 votes came from people who identified themselves as never having physically resided in North Carolina. 

The May 5 decision from U.S. District Judge Richard Myers II, an appointee of President Donald Trump, overturned prior rulings from the North Carolina Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court and ordered the state Elections Board to certify the race. In early April, the appellate court ruled in Griffin’s favor, mandating “cure” periods for voters with allegedly incomplete registrations and overseas voters to provide the missing information, and discounting “Never Resident” votes. The North Carolina Supreme Court later ruled that the 60,000 “Incomplete Voter Registration” votes could not be thrown out; the court, however, extended the cure period for the 1,400 overseas and military voters that the Board flagged as potentially impacted, while maintaining that “Never Resident” voters’ ballots would not count. 

In his 68-page ruling, Myers wrote that the invalidation of military and overseas voters after the election violated their substantive due process rights, while the mandated cure process violated their equal protection rights. The lack of any notice or chance for eligible voters to challenge the “Never Resident” designation also disregarded those voters’ procedural due process rights while creating an unconstitutional burden on their right to vote. The court, he said, can’t condone the attempt to “change the rules of the game after it had been played.”

“You establish the rules before the game,” Myers wrote. “You don’t change them after the game is done.” 

Richard Hasen, the endowed chair in law at UCLA, praised Myers’ ruling as an “important statement” in the face of growing attempts at election subversion. He told Salon that the changes the state courts proposed were rooted in “a misreading or mangling of election law” and that the remedy they approved would have treated “similarly situated voters differently based on where they live in the state and how they are likely to vote.”

As such, “the state courts set a dangerous precedent in allowing a candidate to ask for retroactive changing of rules in the hopes of changing the outcome of an election,” he said, adding that he hopes Myers’ ruling sets a precedent for federal courts.

“We cannot count on every court to do the right thing these days, especially in an atmosphere where conspiracy theories about voting run rampant on the right,” Hasen said. “But, hopefully, enough courts will preserve democracy and the rule of law when it matters.”

Harvard Law Professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos, whose research includes election and constitutional law, told Salon that Griffin and the North Carolina courts that ruled in his favor “flouted basic tenets of our electoral system.”

While Myers’ ruling came as a “pleasant surprise,” Stephanopoulos said that he doesn’t foresee Griffin’s effort becoming a playbook for future candidates who seek to subvert an electoral defeat.

“As we just saw, even conservative judges are unlikely to countenance such efforts that fly in the face of basic election law principles,” Stephanopoulos said.

But John Paredes, counsel for voting rights watchdog Protect Democracy, which filed an amicus brief in federal court on behalf of North Carolina voters, noted the “damage” that Griffin and the state courts' rulings did to public trust that the courts will follow the law. 

“At the end of the day, this case is not difficult on the facts or on the law. Due process is due process, and equal protection is equal protection, whether you're talking about federal law or North Carolina State law,” he told Salon. It’s alarming, he continued, how close the state came to having an election outcome overturned by “post-election shenanigans.” 

“It's troubling that the state courts were willing to go as far as they went,” Paredes said. “It undermines confidence that they're going to call balls and strikes fairly when there's a partisan election at stake.”

Myers paused the enforcement of his ruling for seven days to give Griffin the opportunity to appeal, but the latter would instead concede the race just two days after the ruling dropped. 

“While I do not fully agree with the District Court’s analysis, I respect the court’s holding — just as I have respected every judicial tribunal that has heard this case,” Griffin said in a statement. “I will not appeal the court’s decision.”

Riggs was sworn in inside the Capitol building in North Carolina on Tuesday after the Elections Board certified her victory. 

Though the federal court ultimately ruled in their interest, North Carolina voters have some takeaways of their own from the way the litigation unfolded, including that they need to be more diligent in protecting their votes. 

Rudolph, the Asheville resident, had verified earlier this year that her voter registration application had contained the needed identification information to ensure it could never be contested again. Going forward, however, she said that she will avoid voting absentee and instead vote in person whenever she can, as well as more diligently document her voting process. 

“Coming up against, again, a well-funded, disciplined, well-organized — which began in the 70s and 80s — authoritarian agenda, I think what you realize is ‘Wow, while we're in the circular firing squad of what can happen on the left, the right is really on the march,'” the 57-year-old said.

Rachel Arnold, a Greensboro resident who previously told Salon her vote was challenged on account of her voter registration application, outlined a similar plan of action. While she also already verified that her voter registration was complete earlier this year, she said that, in the future, she will be checking that the Elections Board accepted her vote after each election and regularly checking the state voter registration record ahead of registration deadlines and upcoming elections to ensure she’s not inexplicably removed from the voter rolls.

The 51-year-old also said she’s updated and acquired all of her identity documentation in the face of progressing federal and state proposals that would require eligible voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. 

“I have to be vigilant in making sure that what I can see is maintained and hope to God that what I can't is also being done,” she said, voicing concern that a challenge like Griffin’s will happen again. 

Unlike Rudolph, however, Arnold said she felt vindicated by the “surprisingly abrupt ending to the saga.” 

“We were right all along that they were trying to change the rules after the fact and [that] it was unfair for the voters of North Carolina,” she said, calling the final determination the “best possible outcome” for North Carolinians, “not because of who won but because the rule of law was upheld.