There’s another dangerous effort to challenge elections in North Carolina | Opinion
The North Carolina Supreme Court could soon make a pivotal decision in an election for one of its own seats. But it’s not the only Republican effort to challenge the results of the 2024 election. There’s another that’s much quieter — but equally dangerous.
The Republican National Committee, the North Carolina Republican Party and the Wake County Republican Party are behind a separate lawsuit that is challenging votes in all races — not just the race for state Supreme Court. The lawsuit was first reported by NC Newsline.
Though the lawsuit challenges the same 60,000 allegedly ineligible votes as the one filed by GOP Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin, it’s more far-ranging. A motion filed earlier this month asks the court to order one of two forms of relief: finding and removing all ineligible votes from races for both state and local offices, or giving affected voters the opportunity to amend their registration and removing the votes of those who do not from “all state office election contests in the November 5, 2024 state office general election.”
The race between Griffin and Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs has yet to be certified, as the court blocked the state from certifying Riggs’ victory while the case plays out. The GOP lawsuit, however, is asking for intervention in races that have already been certified. Typically, certification means those results are final, and the window for contesting them is closed.
Patrick Gannon, spokesperson for the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in an email Friday that “the courts considering post-election litigation in North Carolina have routinely interpreted the law to be that once a certificate of election is issued for a contest, it is final,” but noted that one cannot predict what the courts may ultimately do.
It adds another unprecedented layer to a situation that’s already without precedent. Experts can’t recall another election in which this many votes were sought to be deemed ineligible, let alone the results decertified. Gerry Cohen, a member of the Wake County Board of Elections, told me he does not know of any instances in which the results of an election have been decertified.
It would be unwise for the courts to give any credence to it. Accepting legal theories that could disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters is a slippery slope, and the GOP’s lawsuit is proof that it won’t just stop at 60,000 ballots in a single race. If Republicans feel they can use the thinnest legal pretext to challenge outcomes they don’t like, what’s stopping them from trying to invent a new pretext for more votes in more elections? If the outcome of an election can be decided in a courtroom instead of at the ballot box, doesn’t that render our laws and processes essentially meaningless?
The GOP’s lawsuit is probably a long shot, but the RNC’s participation in it is significant — it shows that Republicans are committed to a legal strategy of challenging election losses in court. They may rarely be successful, but even just one court ruling in their favor on a single case would have chaotic and potentially cataclysmic consequences for democracy.
The lawsuit has also caught the attention of national Democrats. The Democratic National Committee filed a request to intervene in the lawsuit this week, arguing against the GOP’s attempt to “collaterally attack these settled election results two months after the fact.”
No matter the outcome, there is inevitably some harm done by lawsuits of this nature. Whether or not the courts agree, the assertion that there is something fishy going on with our elections has an impact on public discourse, and on the trust people have in their institutions. In 2020, nearly every lawsuit that Donald Trump and his allies filed in an attempt to overturn his election loss was a failure in court. But the rhetoric alone was enough to grossly undermine public confidence in our elections, and it led to violence. We can’t afford for that to continue happening.
