NC Supreme Court doesn’t seem to care that it’s destroying itself and democracy | Opinion

The North Carolina Supreme Court is rendering itself illegitimate.

Allison Riggs won election to that court. Her Republican colleagues are doing everything in their power — and things that aren’t in their power — to give her seat to fellow Republican Jefferson Griffin anyway.

Along the way, they are destroying the court itself.

It’s the most straightforward attempt to steal an election in recent memory.

Riggs won after the initial tally.

Riggs won after recounts.

Riggs is a North Carolina Supreme Court justice. Voters in 2024 declared they wanted her to serve another term. If democracy was real in this state, there should have been nothing else to discuss. But democracy isn’t real in this state, or won’t be for long. True democracy lovers would acknowledge the damage being done and punish those responsible by speaking out, and loudly, pulling support and committing to defeating them at the ballot box — that is if our right to vote remains a right.

The Republican Party is playing with fire. They are shamelessly destroying the system in broad daylight and seem to neither realize nor care what’s on the other side of the destruction.

Why should Democratic Gov. Josh Stein feel bound by anything such an openly-corrupt court says? Why should anyone? Why should Riggs relinquish a seat she won, or even continue recusing herself from this case? She is dutifully playing by rules that don’t matter to her Republican colleagues. Because of a sense of honor? Duty? Why? Her Republican colleagues showed their corrupt hands by refusing to throw out Griffin’s specious claims long ago.

They were so cowardly they were afraid to hold oral arguments to explain their decision — because they know their decision is so absurd it can’t be logically explained or defended under the least bit of scrutiny. They are endorsing Griffin’s preposterous contention the rules of the election should be changed — but only in four Democratic counties, not all 100 — in a race during which voters legally cast ballots and adhered to well-established precedent.

Bizarrely, those Republican political operatives in black robes said 60,000 voters Griffin challenged couldn’t be punished because of “mistakes” made by North Carolina, but that eligible North Carolina voters overseas could. Or maybe not bizarrely at all. The only thing that matters is handing Griffin an election he unequivocally lost. They don’t care that many of the votes that might be deemed null and void are from military members and their families. They only care that a fellow Republican be given a seat he did not earn.

That Griffin is on the state Court of Appeals is also a chilling reality. He is so power hungry he would uproot democracy in North Carolina to attain more. It begs the question how he has made decisions on the Court of Appeals. He knows he lost his bid to be elevated to the Supreme Court, but nevertheless has spent months trying to get there. Even if it means spitting on thousands of North Carolinians who took their role in this democracy seriously.

They followed every rule. They exercised their right as we’ve long been taught. Griffin doesn’t give a damn about them or their vote, only about himself.

For this, he should neither be on the Supreme Court nor the Court of the Appeals. He should never be able to hold public power again.

But that’s all it seems most Republicans in this state care about — power. It’s why they were able to gerrymander their way to a supermajority just a couple of years ago in a state whose registered voters are essentially evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.

It’s why they were brazen enough to pass voting laws so obviously dishonest a federal court said they had targeted Black voters “with surgical precision” to disenfranchise them.

Once again, it will be left to federal judges to save North Carolina’s democracy from the Republicans on the North Carolina Supreme Court. If they don’t, democracy here is effectively dead. There would be no reason for any of us to keep pretending otherwise or continue following rules that Republicans are fast turning into mere suggestions.