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By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) -The North Carolina Supreme Court on Monday put on hold an appellate court's decision that gave more than 60,000 voters just 15 days to establish their voting eligibility or have the ballots they cast last fall in a close race for a seat on the state's high court thrown out.
Monday's brief order was signed by Justice Trey Allen, a Republican, and stayed a 2-1 ruling by the North Carolina Court of Appeals in favor of Judge Jefferson Griffin, the Republican candidate for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court.
In the immediate hours after polls closed on November 5, Griffin, who currently sits on the appeals court, was leading Democratic candidate Justice Allison Riggs by nearly 10,000 votes. That lead dwindled as more ballots were counted, and subsequent recounts confirmed Riggs had secured 734 more votes than Griffin, with over 5.5 million ballots cast.
Griffin had sued over the results, arguing that over 60,000 ballots should be excluded as they were cast by voters who were not properly registered because they did not provide their state driver's license numbers or Social Security numbers as a 2004 state law required.
"We're glad that the Supreme Court granted our request for a stay to this deeply misinformed order that threatens to disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters," Riggs' campaign said in a statement.
Riggs has been vying for a full eight-year term on the high court following her 2023 appointment to the court by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper to fill a vacancy on the seven-member tribunal, whose justices are elected.
Griffin's campaign had no comment.
In Friday's ruling, two of Griffin's colleagues on the appeals court, Judges John Tyson and Fred Gore, both Republicans, said that state law remained in effect, yet the state's elections board failed to ensure that voters who did not provide that information fixed those issues.
The judges said that while the court had the authority to throw out those ballots, it would instead require the board to notify voters and give them 15 days to address any deficiencies.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)
