By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) -A federal judge ordered North Carolina’s election board on Monday to not throw out any ballots cast by voters in November in a close race for a seat on the state’s Supreme Court and to certify a sitting Democratic justice’s electoral victory.
Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Myers in Raleigh sided with Justice Allison Riggs as he declared that Judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican trailing the Democrat by 734 votes, cannot “change the rules of the game after it had been played.”
Myers, whom Republican President Donald Trump appointed during his first term, ruled after the North Carolina Supreme Court on April 11 issued an order that put potentially thousands of ballots cast by military and overseas voters into jeopardy.
While the Republican-dominated state top court rejected Griffin’s bid to have more than 60,000 ballots thrown out, it said a smaller set by overseas voters he challenged for not providing photo identification as required by state law needed to verify their eligibility within a 30-day period.
While the board said its plan to comply would affect at most 1,675 voters, Griffin contended that several thousand more should be at issue. Riggs urged Myers to prevent what she called an unprecedented legal effort to overturn an election.
Myers said the “case concerns whether the federal Constitution permits a state to alter the rules of an election after the fact and apply those changes retroactively to only a select group of voters, and in so doing treat those voters differently than other similarly situated individuals.”
He said no, as he concluded that allowing the state supreme court’s ruling to take effect would violate the voters’ equal protection and due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.
Democrats hailed the decision, which Riggs in a social media post on X called a “victory for North Carolina voters.” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said the ruling “must bring an end – once and for all – to Republicans’ attempts to overturn a free and fair election.”
Myers paused his order for seven days so that Griffin could pursue an appeal. Griffin’s campaign said his legal team is reviewing and evaluating next steps.
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, a member of the North Carolina Court of Appeals, in the immediate hours after polls closed on November 5 had been leading Riggs by nearly 10,000 votes, but that lead dwindled as more ballots were counted. Over 5.5 million ballots were cast.
The court has a 5-2 Republican majority. Riggs can continue to serve in her current position until the election dispute is resolved.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Leslie Adler and Michael Perry)
