Allison Riggs didn’t got down to be on the middle of the nation’s sole uncalled 2024 election, nevertheless it’s becoming that she is. Earlier than Riggs grew to become a justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court docket, she spent years as an lawyer pushing to make it simpler for individuals to vote, typically difficult Republican-passed legal guidelines. Now she’s on the middle of one of the crucial pitched battles over vote-counting in reminiscence.
In November, Riggs, a Democrat, appeared to win reelection to the court docket by a paper-thin 734-vote margin, however her opponent, Republican Jefferson Griffin, has challenged greater than 60,000 votes—successfully attempting to get courts to alter the principles of the election, regardless of the votes already having been solid and counted. Whether or not these votes are included within the ultimate tally will resolve the end result of the race—and Riggs’s political future.
“I didn’t count on for me to be in a the-cheese-stands-alone type of state of affairs,” she informed me in late March at her residence in North Carolina. “I don’t need this struggle, however because it got here to me, I’m up for it.”
The battle has now dragged into its fifth month, and will stretch on for months to return. Earlier this month, the North Carolina Court docket of Appeals overturned a decrease court docket’s ruling and sided with Griffin. (He’s presently a choose on that court docket, although he didn’t take part on this determination.) Splitting 2–1 alongside partisan strains, a panel of judges dominated that the challenged votes shouldn’t have counted however gave a lot of the voters three weeks to “treatment” their ballots—to supply info to election officers proving they had been eligible voters.
Then, on Friday night, the North Carolina Supreme Court docket issued a ruling that rejected the overwhelming majority of Griffin’s challenges however agreed that abroad absentee voters, representing a number of thousand ballots, ought to have to supply photograph identification, regardless that that they had not beforehand been requested to take action. It additionally threw out ballots from Americans and North Carolina residents’ kids who’ve by no means resided within the state however had been legally registered. (The court docket has a 5–2 Republican majority, however Riggs is recused from the case.) Riggs appealed to a federal court docket, which allowed the curing course of to maneuver ahead however blocked certification of the election till all problems with federal regulation are resolved. Authorized specialists see severe conflicts between Griffin’s arguments and federal regulation.
“That is in keeping with what we requested in our preliminary submitting,” Griffin’s marketing campaign stated in an announcement after the state supreme court docket’s ruling. “The ballots of these abroad with out IDs and people who have by no means lived right here should be addressed; the remainder are as much as the Court docket to resolve whether or not they need to be addressed.”
For the reason that election, Riggs has given a restricted variety of interviews, whereas Griffin has opted to not converse publicly in any respect, citing the state’s Code of Judicial Conduct. (“Justice Riggs’ determination to disregard the Code is her determination, which is a matter that may most certainly come earlier than the court docket as soon as this litigation is resolved,” Paul Shumaker, a advisor to Griffin’s marketing campaign, wrote in an e mail.) She agreed to talk with me as a result of she believes that the ordeal she goes by means of—and the destiny she could but meet—is a warning to the American individuals concerning the route the nation is heading. If partisan judges can change the principles of an election after the election, in a brazen effort to assist a candidate from their very own social gathering, what can assure that votes solid in good religion shall be counted? And with out that assure, how can the voting public ensure it’ll have its say?
“What’s worrisome is this concept that folks with energy, in the event that they don’t like who wins, can resolve whether or not or to not acknowledge the election end result, whether or not or to not peacefully switch energy and concede,” she informed me. “This type of election denialism is an actual assault on the fundamentals of democracy; it’s like dropping a match in a dry forest. So I see the stakes as nationally very excessive.”
Riggs didn’t got down to be a choose. She didn’t even got down to be a lawyer. She grew up in West Virginia and attended the College of Florida, the place she bought concerned in politics and began to understand the ability of election legal guidelines. “I used to be in class, residing in Florida, through the 2000 election, so 537 votes making the distinction in a nationwide election targeted me early on the significance of each single vote,” she stated. However Riggs studied microbiology as an undergraduate. She thought of a profession in academia and even bought a grasp’s diploma in historical past, then utilized to regulation faculty, with plans to develop into an environmental lawyer.
Throughout an exercise truthful her first 12 months, she stumbled right into a clinic on civil-rights restoration for individuals convicted of crimes. Riggs found a ardour for election work and switched her focus. Throughout a summer time internship working for then–North Carolina Lawyer Common Roy Cooper, she met a lawyer named Anita Earls, who was a member of the state board of elections. Earls was beginning a brand new nonprofit known as the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) that will struggle for truthful congressional maps, and she or he introduced Riggs on.
It was a outstanding second to become involved in voting litigation in North Carolina. The Outdated North State had lengthy been dominated by Democrats, however in 2010, the GOP gained management of each homes of the state legislature for the primary time since 1870; two years later, Republicans additionally captured the governorship. This gave them management over a pivotal redistricting course of after the 2010 census; these battles haven’t ended but. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court docket struck down Part 4 of the Voting Rights Act, permitting North Carolina and different states to rewrite voting legal guidelines with out federal oversight. Most of the new measures had been billed as efforts to forestall fraud, although voter fraud is vanishingly uncommon, and a federal court docket present in 2016 that Republican-backed legal guidelines focused Black voters “with nearly surgical precision.”
Though SCSJ typically litigated in opposition to legal guidelines handed by the GOP—Riggs argued earlier than the U.S. Supreme Court docket in a gerrymandering case—Riggs informed me she didn’t view her work as partisan. “I inform individuals on a regular basis, over time, I helped extra Republicans solid their ballots and get them counted than most Republican political operatives,” she stated. When individuals sought assist by means of voter-assistance hotlines, “I didn’t care what your social gathering affiliation was. I cared that your vote bought counted.”
In 2023, Cooper, who had develop into the Democratic governor, appointed Riggs to a seat on the court docket of appeals; 9 months later, he elevated her to the supreme court docket, the place she rejoined Earls, who’d gained a seat on the court docket in 2018. (In North Carolina, the governor can fill judicial vacancies, however jurists should then win election when their phrases are up.) She informed me the change from advocate to jurist was not tough. “A part of being a superb litigator is knowing each facet of an argument,” she stated. “The willingness to provide credence and attempt to perceive all sides of a authorized query was not one thing that was new to me.”
Riggs had by no means run for workplace, although she’d labored in grassroots organizing, and she or he confronted an intense race in 2024. State supreme courts have develop into a brand new battleground for partisan warfare, and North Carolina’s is among the many most polarized. The dominant challenge within the contest between Riggs and Griffin was the partisan stability of the court docket and its energy over points reminiscent of abortion and redistricting. On Election Evening, she appeared to fall simply quick: Preliminary outcomes confirmed her trailing by about 10,000 votes. However as provisional and absentee ballots had been counted, she slowly erased Griffin’s lead and at last overtook him.
This sample of late-counted Democratic votes, referred to as the “blue shift,” was additionally outstanding within the 2020 presidential race, and President Donald Trump used it to falsely declare fraud. It’s a product of how lengthy tallying each vote can take, particularly in understaffed county-elections places of work. “No ballots ‘got here in,’” she stated. “They had been all there. It was only a matter of counting them and counting each eligible poll.”
Griffin requested a number of recounts, however he didn’t achieve any floor. Then, with certification looming, he moved his struggle to the courts. The challenges appeared like a protracted shot then, particularly as a result of his arguments required throwing out votes that had been solid lawfully on the time of the election, and in conditions by which nobody alleged wrongdoing by voters. Griffin challenged three teams of voters. The biggest was voters whose registration information didn’t embody driver’s-license or Social Safety numbers, both as a result of that they had not been requested to supply them or as a result of election officers had not accurately recorded them. Amongst these voters, remarkably, are Riggs’s personal dad and mom. The second group was abroad voters, together with some members of the army, who didn’t submit photograph identification with their poll, once more as a result of it was not required by regulation. (Griffin himself had used the identical technique to vote in earlier elections.) The third was the never-resident voters.
Griffin’s litigation had different peculiarities. It argued that these votes had been improper, however solely within the supreme-court race; different races that included them had already been licensed. He additionally went after ballots in just a few counties that had voted closely for Riggs. “You can’t straight-face speak about election integrity after which problem ballots solely in 4 closely Democratic counties,” she informed me. “You simply can’t.” (Nobody is aware of for positive what the tally can be if all or a few of the challenged votes had been thrown out. Votes are retrievable below state regulation, because the journalist Jeremy Markovich has defined, however whom they assist is unknown for now. Even so, one can surmise that going after votes thought to lean Democratic would harm the Democratic candidate greater than the Republican.)
The argument for excluding these votes is just like the anti-fraud justification for voter-ID legal guidelines: For its adherents, permitting even one fraudulent vote taints the tally. However Riggs stated excluding eligible votes for hypothetical causes is not any higher. “Each time you exclude one eligible vote, you will have the identical downside: You’re distorting the voters,” she informed me. And even when fully eliminating all fraud had been an inexpensive aim, “my opponent can’t level to 1 ineligible vote amongst the 68,000 individuals whose votes he’s attempting to toss,” Riggs informed me.
Just a few outstanding Republicans have spoken out in opposition to Griffin’s effort. One is former Governor Pat McCrory, who himself made an absurd fraud declare in a strongly Democratic county after dropping the 2016 election. The longtime GOP elections lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg just lately wrote a column in The Carolina Journal, a conservative outlet, evaluating Griffin’s arguments to Vice President Al Gore’s after the 2000 election. (Ginsberg would know: He was common counsel to George W. Bush’s marketing campaign.)
“It must be embarrassing for Choose Jefferson Griffin to make—and ask his fellow judges to purchase—his arguments to disenfranchise authorized voters, particularly members of our army. Bold candidates could not at all times follow ideas, however judges should,” he wrote.
However by and huge, North Carolina Republicans have stored quiet or lent assist, particularly as Griffin’s problem appears like much less and fewer of a Hail Mary. Riggs stated she expects to prevail finally, however she informed me that even when she does, the continued delay is dangerous by itself.
“The longer this drags out, the extra voters are like, I’m only a pawn of their video games. And what distinction does it make if I vote? As a result of if the opposite individual wins, they’ll simply problem my vote,” Riggs stated. “Each single day that this goes on, it does actual and lasting harm to our democracy and other people’s religion in it.”
There’s no going getting that point again, however the end result is now within the arms of Republican justices who must select between one among their very own and the voters’ choose.
