The N.C. courts expert writes about the threats to democracy after the recent state Supreme Court race between Justice Allison Riggs and Judge Jefferson Griffin.
By Billy Corriher
Beacon Media
A few months after I left my hometown of Cherryville, North Carolina for college, I voted in my first presidential election. Like so many people in America, I was shocked to watch the disputed 2000 election play out in Florida and then the U.S. Supreme Court. One side accused the other of trying to change the rules after the election, so that their candidate would come out ahead.
I was even more shocked, decades later, when something similar happened in North Carolina.
Last month, our state Supreme Court ordered election officials to change voting rules — after ballots had been cast months earlier — and throw out votes from just a few Democratic-leaning counties for the N.C. Supreme Court election between Justice Allison Riggs and Judge Jefferson Griffin.
People who care about democracy breathed a sigh of relief when a federal judge put a stop to this in early May, ordering the state to certify the rightful winner of the election, Justice Riggs.
It was the right conclusion but alarming that it took a drawn out court battle to affirm one of the most basic principles of democracy: the person who gets the most votes is the winner.
The losing candidate — Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin — couldn’t steal the election, but he did immeasurable damage to the public’s faith in our democracy. He challenged 65,000 ballots from voters who complied with all the rules, and four justices on our state Supreme Court agreed to throw out some of them.
Griffin never presented any evidence that voters did anything wrong in casting their ballots, but it suddenly looked like their votes might not count.
I know I wasn’t alone in hearing from friends, longtime voters and lifelong North Carolinians, who were shocked to learn that they were on the list of voters targeted by Griffin.
The whole thing has me worried about the health of North Carolina’s democracy. State Supreme Court Justices Trey Allen, Tamara Barringer, Phil Berger Jr., and Chief Justice Paul Newby ruled to throw out overseas ballots—including votes cast by members of the military—even though those voters complied with all of the election rules at the time.
I’m not the only one who’s worried. Someone even asked me why they should vote, if their ballots might be thrown out for no good reason. It’s a fair question to ask.
But the truth is, if our votes didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be fighting tooth and nail to throw out our ballots. Riggs, a Democrat, defeated Griffin, a Republican, by just 734 votes. And in 2020, Republican Chief Justice Paul Newby won by only 401 votes out of millions of ballots. Every single vote matters in these statewide judicial elections.
Democratic Justice Anita Earls has already begun her 2026 reelection campaign, with a Republican state lawmaker, Rep. Sarah Stevens, announced as a challenger for her seat. The 2028 state Supreme Court elections will also be crucial, as control of the court will be up for grabs. We could again see razor-thin margins after all the votes are counted.
And these votes will be tallied by a brand new Board of Elections, which could be pivotal. Republicans in the North Carolina legislature have tried for the past decade to take over the state Elections Board, and they finally succeeded in early May. One of the new board members, Bob Rucho, is a former state lawmaker who was in charge of gerrymandering election districts—a practice that unquestionably undermines democracy.
This new board will have the power to rule on post-election “challenges,” such as the 65,000 challenges that Griffin submitted. The board may be more open to throwing out ballots when their political party loses a close race. I fear that it could also make it harder to vote by limiting voting hours or polling locations in certain areas.
It’s a scary time for our democracy, both in Washington, D.C. and Raleigh. But we cannot give up.
We have to stay engaged, fight for a fair system, and ensure we support judges who have fought to defend democracy. We need judges who will ensure that all our votes count, no matter who wins.
Most people expect judges to embrace the basic core principles of democracy. I fear that some elected officials have forgotten those principles. It’s up to us to make sure we elect judges who remember them.
Billy Corriher is the state courts manager at People’s Parity Project Action, which is organizing for a democratized legal system that empowers working people, and a former freelance journalist.