"Unbelievable and egregious": NC voters fear retroactive disenfranchisement after court ruling

Five months after the 2024 election, voters in North Carolina are still awaiting a certified conclusion in the state's contentious Supreme Court race after their ballots were swept up in Republican candidate and Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin's election challenge seeking to overturn his November defeat by throwing out 65,000 votes. 

Spring Dawson-McClure, a Hillsborough resident who was informed a few weeks after the election that her vote was being challenged, told Salon the challenge has made her "incredibly disheartened" and "angry," especially given its disparate impact on women and voters of color. As Griffin's effort to claim victory against Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs, to whom he lost by just 734 votes, drags on, Dawson-McClure said that it's hard to remain hopeful about the outcome. One of the latest major updates in the case — a ruling from the state Court of Appeals that threatens to retroactively disenfranchise thousands of challenged voters should it ever take effect — has only worsened her disappointment. 

"I don't know any other way to feel about it than it is a direct assault on our democracy," Dawson-McClure said in a phone interview. "To me, it's like this next level that they apparently feel emboldened and entitled to disenfranchise 60,000 voters so he can win."

The North Carolina Supreme Court issued an 11th-hour order in the case Monday that temporarily blocked the implementation and enforcement of the appellate court's remedy to what they ruled is the state Board of Elections' unlawful and erroneous counting of tens of thousands of votes in the Supreme Court election. But the decision and its cures, paused pending the Supreme Court's decision on whether to take up the case, has already left some North Carolina voters reeling as the threat of disenfranchisement appears more real.

"People are angry. People are fired up to continue to follow this in support of democracy," Dawson-McClure said. "I think that people care about this very much — care about their own vote, care about our right to vote in the state and getting back to a place where we can have faith that the voters will decide who represents us in office."

The public health researcher previously told Salon she suspected her vote was being contested due to a clerical error in matching her now-hyphenated last name with her Social Security number in her voter registration. After following the election challenge litigation in late 2024, she went to the Orange County Board of Elections to pull her voter registration file in January. She confirmed she had included the last four digits of her Social Security number when she registered to vote in the state in 2012 and ensured that her name and registration were properly matched. The Orange County board staffer who assisted her told her that her verification would only apply going forward; her 2024 vote would still be under contest. 

"I did not fathom in my lifetime that I would be fighting to have my vote count. That is such a basic tenet of our democracy, and [that] that's where the battleground is right now is just absolutely chilling about how far things have gone in this state," Dawson-McClure said ahead of the court's Monday order. "If this doesn't go down in support of democracy — upholding our Constitution — I don't have any faith that there will ever be free and fair elections in the state again."

Griffin first filed his election challenges before the state Supreme Court in December 2024 after two recounts confirmed his loss and the state Board of Elections rejected his claims that the votes are invalid. He contested the votes of some 60,000 voters he alleges are ineligible because they did not provide or were not asked to provide their Social Security or driver's license numbers on their voter registrations; another 5,500 absentee ballots from overseas and military voters because those voters failed to include photo ID with their ballots; and the votes of several hundred "never resident" voters who have never lived in the state. 

Griffin has argued that tossing out the votes — many of which are mail-in or early votes from North Carolinians in Democratic-leaning counties — would hand him the win. 

On Friday, the North Carolina Court of Appeals handed down a 2-1 ruling in favor of Griffin, overturning a lower court's opinion that the state Board of Elections acted properly in including those contested votes in the count.

"The post-election protest process preserves the fundamental right to vote in free elections 'on equal terms,'" the judges wrote in the opinion, referencing legal precedent. "This right is violated when 'votes are not accurately counted [because] [unlawful] ballots are included in the election results.'"

So far, Griffin has not proven in court that any of the flagged voters are actually ineligible — a point that Appellate Judge Tobias Hampson emphasized in his dissent Friday. Hampson also noted that the Board has "produced evidence tending to show at least 28,803 of the challenged voters did, in fact, supply a drivers license or social security number when they registered to vote."

Still, the court's order, which was set to take effect at 5 p.m. Monday before the stay, directed the state and county Election Boards to create a process for voters to "cure" the defects in their registrations or abide by the photo ID requirement. Voters would have 15 business days from the date the county boards mail the notice to provide the missing documentation in order for their 2024 votes in just the state Supreme Court race to be counted. 

The panel also ruled that the hundreds of "Never Resident" voters flagged would be excluded from the count, which would retroactively disenfranchise voters protected by a 2011 state law. 

The judges' cure would present a number of logistical challenges for the county boards and North Carolinians, especially those still recovering from the devastating hurricane in September and the wildfires now ravaging the state, argued Anne Tindall, special counsel with a focus on North Carolina for Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan voting rights group that has submitted an amicus brief in the case on behalf of affected North Carolinians. 

County Boards of Election may lack the budget to execute the process seamlessly and may have difficulty tracking down people who have moved since the election or been displaced by the natural disasters in order to notify them, Tindall said. Notice will likely take longer to reach military and overseas voters, and a 15-day window to verify or correct registration information and submit photo ID would put any voter on a time crunch.

"The burden of proof is now on the voters, and that is exactly where it should not be," Tindall said. 

She also argued that the ruling itself presents a "screaming violation" of due process rights under the United States Constitution because of its retroactive application of new rules to ballots cast in November and a "screaming equal protection violation" because it appears the court "has sanctioned" Griffin's voter ID challenge to just overseas voters registered in four Democratic-leaning counties rather than in all 100.

"The opinion and the process they outline is just wholly not grounded in reality, unless if the reality is one where you accept that tens of thousands of people will be disenfranchised," Tindall said.  

With the opinion now halted and Riggs and the state Board of Elections' appeals filed in the North Carolina Supreme Court, voters will learn in the coming weeks whether the justices will decide to hear the case, Tindall said, noting that the court has not expedited a response to the appeal from Griffin. While the justices declining would allow the appeals court decision to stand, they have an incentive to hear the case because of its "monumental" importance to voters. 

In their appeals, counsel for Riggs and the Board noted that Griffin did not object to a stay in the appeals court ruling pending an answer from the Supreme Court. They said, however, that Griffin does object to the justices taking up the case and will be filing a response asking that the appeals be denied. 

In a statement to Salon, Griffin campaign adviser Paul Shumaker acknowledged voters' frustrations with the election challenge, noting that the case has been about the equal application of the law. 

"As the Court of Appeals ruling pointed out, the State Board of Elections failed to do so," Shumaker said. "It is easy to understand why voters have lost confidence in the process; this case is about the failure of the NC State Board of Elections to equally apply the law."

But to Rachel Arnold, a Greensboro resident whose vote Griffin has also challenged over her voter registration, the case has been built on a lie. Similar to Dawson-McClure, Arnold said she received notice that her vote was being contested in the weeks after the election and went to the Guilford County Board of Elections to verify her registration in January. Upon pulling her application, she saw that she had provided her North Carolina driver's license number when she registered in 2009.

"So when Judge Griffin and his attorneys allege that none of us provided the information that we were required to provide, that is a lie — not just 'incorrect,'" Arnold said in a phone interview with anger in her voice.

"It is an election challenge using a lie as the main argument. That's the part that is so absolutely unbelievable and egregious," the 51-year-old added.

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Arnold, who participated in an amicus brief affected voters represented by the Southern Coalition for Social Justice filed in the case, said she has previously voted in most general, special and primary elections in North Carolina since she registered and has never before had her vote challenged there, nor in any other states she's lived and voted in. She told Salon she believes her vote was caught up in the incomplete voter registration challenge because she voted early this election cycle. 

While Arnold said Griffin's challenge has not shaken her trust in the integrity of the state's election process, she argued that it does make her "call into question" the ethics of the candidates on the ballot, particularly the Republican ones.

"I have a really hard time with the idea that someone is challenging an election result who wants to be a judge on the highest court in our state," she said. "If he's going to question the results of the election, shouldn't we be questioning every decision that he makes on any court that he sits on at this point?"

Arnold also bemoaned the notion that she and other voters should have to "constantly be watching" to make sure that the election board staff "don't make mistakes" with voter data. They should be able to trust that their applications remain valid once they're approved, that election rules are upheld after they've been put in place and that judges expecting voters to adhere to their rulings and follow the law do the same, she said.

This election challenge, she argued, is "a test case" for the rest of the nation 

If Republicans are "successful in challenging an election by changing the rules after the fact, they are going to do that in every other state in which they have an opportunity," Arnold said, emphasizing she feels "very strongly" about the prospect.