Background
When the North Carolina Supreme Court ordered state election officials to revisit thousands of challenged ballots in April 2025, it breathed new uncertainty into the results of a statewide election that had already languished in procedural purgatory for months. Within weeks, however, a federal judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina stayed the order on due-process grounds, effectively reinstating the original results reported in November. The episode exposed the deep fragility of North Carolina’s electoral dispute framework and how quickly it can become ensnared in its own procedural contradictions.
On November 5, 2024, Justice Allison Riggs defeated Judge Jefferson G. Griffin in one of the closest statewide elections in North Carolina history.[1] Of more than five-and-a-half million votes cast, Justice Riggs prevailed by just 734—a margin of roughly 0.01%.[2] In the weeks that followed, Judge Griffin filed hundreds of protests with county boards of elections across the state, challenging the validity of tens of thousands of ballots.[3] Three categories of these protests are relevant to the discussion here.
First, Judge Griffin challenged the ballots of more than sixty thousand voters whose registration records, he claimed, lacked a valid driver’s license or Social Security number.[4] Second, he contested 1,409 absentee ballots in Guilford County cast by overseas voters.[5] And third, he challenged 266 votes from so-called “Never Residents,” a term referring to overseas citizens who have never lived in North Carolina but retain voting rights through their parents, who were formerly North Carolina residents.[6] The North Carolina State Board of Elections (“Board”) consolidated these three protests to facilitate a uniform resolution.[7] What followed was a cascade of inconsistent rulings unfolding over the next six months before North Carolina voters finally received any assurance about which candidate would occupy a seat on state’s highest court.
The Judicial Maze
The Board took the first crack at resolving this contentious dispute, denying all three of Judge Griffin’s protests on the ground that he failed to provide adequate notice to affected voters, thereby violating constitutional due-process requirements.[8] The Board also concluded that, even if notice had been proper, the number of potentially problematic ballots was insufficient to have any material effect on the outcome of the election.[9] Observing that “the number of potentially ineligible voters with ballots in the count was significantly lower than Griffin had alleged,” the Board determined that his claims were unfounded.[10]
From there, the case spent months trickling through a variety of procedural and jurisdictional detours before another court finally reached the merits.[11] The state-law claims eventually proceeded in the Wake County Superior Court, which affirmed the Board’s dismissal of all three protests.[12] Judge Griffin then appealed to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, which reached the exact opposite conclusion on every material issue.
First, the court concluded that the voters with allegedly incomplete registrations—more than sixty thousand people—were not “legal” voters and thus not entitled to have their votes counted.[13] Further, the overseas absentee ballots were invalid because the Board had improperly excluded these voters from the photo ID requirement.[14] The court granted both categories of voters a fifteen-day remedial window to provide the required information or have their votes discarded entirely.[15] Finally, the court held that, despite explicit statutory authorization, the Never Residents were categorically barred from voting in state elections under the North Carolina Constitution.[16]
For several days, it appeared that tens of thousands of registered North Carolina voters would have their votes retroactively nullified, and that a razor-thin statewide election might be effectively reversed by judicial decree. The North Carolina Supreme Court, however, changed course. While concurring that some voters’ registration records may have been incomplete, the Court emphasized that “the Board is primarily, if not totally, responsible.”[17] Reversing the Court of Appeals decision, it held that “mistakes made by negligent election officials in registering citizens” cannot serve as a basis for rescinding their ballots.[18] The court also noted that the result might have been different had there been any factual or legal merit to Judge Griffin’s claims.[19]
Inexplicably, however, the Court did not extend this reasoning to the overseas absentee ballots, instead granting those voters a thirty-day remedial window.[20] The Court likewise declined to review the Court of Appeals’ holding on the constitutionality of the statute enfranchising Never Residents.[21] Thus, had this decision stood, a still sizeable group of eligible voters—who had for all intents and purposes cast their ballots in full accordance with the rules promulgated by the Board—may yet have had their votes discarded.
Finally, the federal district court stepped in. Although expressing reluctance to interfere with state electoral procedures, the court concluded that those processes must ultimately yield to constitutional due-process guarantees.[22]As it explained, “a state cannot, consistent with due process, ‘change the rules’ after ‘the game,’ by telling ‘voters one thing before the election and chang[ing] policy thereafter.’”[23] Accordingly, the court rejected Judge Griffin’s two remaining protests, holding that the “retroactive invalidation of overseas military and civilian voters’ ballots violates their substantive due process rights.”[24] Likewise, it determined that invalidating the Never Resident’s ballots “without notice or an opportunity to be heard represents an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote.”[25] With that, the court brought this protracted litigation to a close. Three days after the district court opinion was issued on May 5, and six months after the general election, Judge Griffin conceded the race.[26] By the time the dispute finally reached its conclusion, the process exposed alarming inconsistencies in how North Carolina’s judicial and administrative institutions handle post-election challenges.
A Concerning Message to North Carolina Voters
What is remarkable here is not federal intervention in a statewide election, nor disagreement over the minutiae of election procedure. It is that four separate courts were each called upon to issue decisions capable of determining the results of a momentous state supreme court race, and they produced four patently irreconcilable opinions. The fundamental rights of nearly seventy thousand citizens—and the outcome of a major statewide election—rested on a veritable judicial seesaw, one that just so happened to tilt in favor of permitting their lawfully cast ballots. That is hardly a reassuring feature of an electoral system whose legitimacy depends on public faith in the integrity of its institutions. When candidates can manipulate procedural mechanisms to contest settled results, that faith is shaken, and democracy suffers.
Not a single tribunal found any merit in Judge Griffin’s claims, yet it took months of exhausting judicial wrangling before the duly elected candidate could assume her seat. Though the challenge ultimately failed, it is concerning that something as basic as the numerical tally of votes can hinge so heavily on the uneven application of legal standards between courts. The careful adjudication of electoral challenges is, of course, essential to any functioning democracy. But it cannot be the case that courts routinely reach conflicting, election-altering conclusions when interpreting the very mechanisms designed to evaluate those challenges. Perhaps the district court’s ruling will provide some measure of consistency in future contests. In the meantime, however, voters deserve greater transparency and renewed assurance that their collective will cannot be disregarded on a whim.
[1] 11/05/2024 Official General Election Results: NC Supreme Court Associate Justice Seat 06, N.C. State Bd. of Elections, https://er.ncsbe.gov/contest_details.html?election_dt=11/05/2024&county_id=0&contest_id=1377 (last visited Nov. 10, 2025).
[2] Id.
[3] Griffin v. N.C. State Bd. of Elections, 781 F. Supp. 3d 411, 418 (E.D.N.C. 2025). Pursuant to N.C. Gen. Stat. § 163-182.10(a), candidates challenging the election results must first petition the individual county boards of elections.
[4] Griffin, 781 F. Supp. 3d at 418–19. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 163-82.4(a)(11) requires that all registered voters must provide, in relevant part, their “[d]rivers license number or, if the applicant does not have a drivers license number, the last four digits of the applicant’s social security number.”
[5] Griffin, 781 F. Supp. 3d at 419.
[6] Id.
[7] Id. Pursuant to N.C. Gen. Stat. § 163-182.12, the North Carolina State Board of Elections may consolidate or assume jurisdiction of any case before the county boards of elections at its discretion.
[8] In re Election Protests of Jefferson Griffin, Ashlee Adams, Frank Sossamon, & Stacie McGinn, Decision and Order, at 1–2 (N.C. State Bd. of Elections, Dec. 27, 2024), https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.ncsbe.gov/State_Board_Meeting_Docs/Orders/Protest%20Appeals/Griffin-Adams-McGinn-Sossamon%20II_2024.pdf [hereinafter Board Decision].
[9] Id. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 163-182.10(d)(2)e dictates that a successful election challenge must establish that the alleged irregularities were “sufficient serious to cast doubt on the apparent results of the election.” The courts have interpreted this to mean that “an election or referendum will not be disturbed for irregularities absent a showing that the irregularities are sufficient to alter the result.” In re Appeal of Ramseur, 463 S.E.2d 254, 256 (1995).
[10] Board Decision, at 11.
[11] See Griffin, 781 F. Supp. 3d at 419–20.
[12] Id. at 420.
[13] Griffin v. N.C. State Bd. of Elections, 915 S.E.2d 212, 225 (N.C. Ct. App. 2025).
[14] Id. at 227.
[15] Id. at 225, 227.
[16] Id. at 228.
[17] Griffin v. N.C. State Bd. of Elections, 913 S.E.2d 894, 896 (N.C. 2025) (quoting Scheer v. City of Miami, 15 F. Supp. 2d 1338, 1344 (S.D. Fla. 1998)).
[18] Id. at 895–96.
[19] Id. at 896.
[20] Id. at 896–97.
[21] Id. at 897.
[22] Griffin, 781 F. Supp. 3d at 442.
[23] Id.
[24] Id. at 444
[25] Id. at 449.
[26] Erin Geiger Smith, Griffin Concedes to Riggs, Ending Six-Month Dispute Over North Carolina Supreme Court Election, State Ct. Rep. (May 8, 2025), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/griffin-concedes-riggs-ending-six-month-dispute-over-north-carolina.
