
Jefferson Griffin says these voters didn’t provide proper identification. A lawyer says he’s falsely relying on a name data error, likely from misspellings.
RALEIGH, N.C. โ Yet another twist in the race for the North Carolina Supreme Court: that same court is now blocking state elections officials from certifying Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Rigg as the winner.
The 5-1 decision from the Republican-majority court came Tuesday afternoon, only one day after a federal judge sent the case back to the state Supreme Court. Riggs, the incumbent, recused herself from the order.
It means more time is needed to look into her Republican challenger’s claims of invalid voters.
After two recounts, Riggs holds a 734-vote lead over Republican Jefferson Griffin. However, Griffin says 60,000 of those votes should have never been counted in the first place, accusing these voters of not providing the correct identification to register.
The State Board of Elections has already voted to reject those claims. Under state law, Griffin should’ve appealed that decision in Wake County Superior Court. He did not, and the deadline to do so passed last month.
Anne Tindall is an attorney withย Protect Democracy, who says it isn’t an issue of registration; it’s an issue of database errors.
“It’s pretty easily explainable when you understand how this list came to be,” Tindall said. “There’s a mismatch in data somewhere in the system that leaves fields blank for driver’s license and social security numbers.”
She says two groups are disproportionately represented in this list: people of color and women.
“Misspelled names are going to be more likely among those who you know have whose names are not English,” she said. “A human might be able to look at the names and understand what’s happening here, but the database doesn’t.”
For women, she says it likely comes down to changing their last names when they get married, either to a fully new name or a hyphenated one.
It’s what may have happened to one Hillsborough voter, Spring Dawson-McClure.
“Honestly, at this point, I’m not exactly sure what to do,” Dawson-McClure said. “I’m pretty disheartened that it’s gone this far.”
She received a letter months ago from the North Carolina Republican Party that said her vote was impacted. However, it didn’t say why.ย
She went searching for answers on her own, stopping by her local board of elections.
“It’s a blatant lie. You can see on the application that I filled in my social security number as required,” Dawson-McClure said. “The local representative that I spoke with could actually see in the system that they verified with my ID the first time that I voted in 2012, so I believe strongly that I have registered and voted legally all these years, including in 2024.”
She’s been registered since she was 18 but re-registered with her hyphenated last name after she got married.
“Iโm angry about it, and I’m scared about the outcome of this particular election, and I’m scared for what it signals about our democracy that folks can just challenge, can just throw up a protest if they don’t like the result,” Dawson-McClure said.
No matter what, Tindall says this challenge came far too late.
“It’s really changing the rules of the election after it’s already been run, in a way to change the outcome,” Tindall said.
As for what’s next in this race, she said: “Your guess is as good as mine.”