North Carolina top court rules to count most ballots challenged in judicial race

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) -The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled on Friday that more than 60,000 ballots cast in November by voters in a close race for a seat on the state's high court could be counted, but it left open the possibility of discounting thousands of others.

The state's top court sided with Justice Allison Riggs by reversing the most consequential holding of last week's decision by the North Carolina Court of Appeals in favor of Judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican who after the election and recounts is trailing the Democrat by 734 votes.

That holding concerned the bulk of the ballots challenged by Griffin, who currently sits on the appeals court and had argued that over 60,000 ballots should be excluded because voters did not provide their state driver's license numbers or Social Security numbers as a 2004 state law required when registering.

In an opinion signed by Republican Justice Trey Allen, the court's majority said the State Board of Elections' failure to ensure voters' registrations conformed with the law was "deeply troubling" but that the fault for those defects lied with the board, not voters.

But the court said that some military and overseas voters whose ballots Griffin challenged for not providing photo identification would need to verify their eligibility within a 30-day period or risk having their votes tossed out.

Riggs was recused from hearing the appeal. The only other Democrat on the 5-2 Republican majority court, Justice Anita Earls, partially dissented, saying the ruling treated 2,000 to 7,000 ballots by military and overseas voters as fraudulent unless they can prove otherwise.

"It is no small thing to overturn the results of an election in a democracy by throwing out ballots that were legally cast consistent with all election laws in effect on the day of the election," Earls wrote.

Riggs, the daughter of a 30-year military veteran, in a statement called it "unacceptable that the Court is choosing to selectively disenfranchise North Carolinians serving our country, here and overseas."

She 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 in a statement said the ballots of the overseas voters without IDs and those who have never lived in North Carolina "need to be addressed."

He had in the immediate hours after polls closed on November 5 been leading Riggs by nearly 10,000 votes, but that lead dwindled as more ballots were counted. Over 5.5 million ballots were cast.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Sandra Maler)