CNN
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Jen Badour volunteered as a poll greeter at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus during the November election. There, a bell rang at the polling station for first-time voters.
She told young voters there, “Listen, you’re not going to see or hear your fireworks to count your votes, but you’re going to feel them in your heart.” ”Badour recalled to CNN.
Now, she is one of about 65,000 voters, including many affected by Hurricane Helen, whose votes were cast in a play set up when all eyes were on President Donald Trump’s campaign. I’m trying to expand a workbook.
The GOP is trying to closely monitor the North Carolina Supreme Court election. There, two recounts show Alison Riggs holding her seat, with 734 votes ahead of her GOP opponent, Judge Jefferson Griffin.
As they move forward in multiple legal forums, Republicans have not presented any evidence that voter fraud occurred in the election. With a large portion of the votes challenged, they instead rely on what amount to clerical errors by election officials to argue that those votes should be thrown out. They are also challenging thousands of overseas votes, including those by overseas military personnel and their families, and for some votes they have been rejected by courts in pre-election court battles in the state. Using discussion.
Critics warn that if successful, Gambit will set a new standard for throwing out elections based on techniques that are not the fault of voters.
The GOP approach is “undemocratic” and “radical,” said David Becker, a former DOJ attorney and election law expert.
“It exceeds almost every lawsuit I’ve seen before challenging an election,” Becker said.
Badour, a Chapel Hill resident, had been registered to vote since 1992 and was born and raised in North Carolina. However, due to an error by election officials, commonly used registration forms did not require a specific identification number required by law until 2023. It is possible that Baddour did not provide these ID numbers. Or, if so, the numbers may not have been recorded when she registered.
“I would have easily given it,” Badur said. “I have voted many times and updated the record many times. No one has ever told me, you know, ‘give this information.’ ”
The origins of Griffin’s legal challenge can be traced to the diggings of Carol Snow, a North Carolina woman who began investigating the state’s election policies in 2021.
“I started out as a skeptic,” she said in an email to CNN. “After years of research and analysis of NC data and election laws, I am now a full-fledged Grade A bona fide election denier.”
Using public records requests, Snow’s registration data showed that the registration data for 225,000 voters did not have a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number. A 2004 state law requires election officials to collect at least one of these ID numbers.
Snow is registered with the state Board of Elections, flagging the failure of registration forms to collect the required ID numbers. Election officials updated forms and other registration materials after filing the administrative complaint, but the state Board of Elections rejected calls for election officials to obtain ID information from each of those voters. I did.
Before the election, the GOP filed a lawsuit noting an administrative grievance by challenging the eligibility of the votes, but a judge treated Republicans with a legal setback and denied them pre-election relief. I did.
Griffin’s post-election protests led to a new version of the claim. In addition to two other buckets of challenges, his lawsuit targets 60,000 voters with so-called “incomplete” registrations who vote absentee or early.
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Asheville, North Carolina students will return to school on Monday
Women make up a disproportionate number of voters who have challenged their ID numbers for missing them, according to data obtained through a public records request by the state Democratic Party.
That dynamic, some Democrats and election officials are worried about because of the discrepancy between the woman’s maiden name and her married name, and because the ID number she provided is running against other government databases. is. If the name and number do not match, the ID number will not be entered into the registration record.
The voters caught in the middle include those who have voted and lived in the state for decades, served in their own elected offices, and overcame the destruction of Hurricane Helen to exercise their franchise. It will be. Republicans are even challenging votes cast by Riggs’ parents.
“These voters did nothing wrong,” Riggs told CNN. “They’ve been voters for a long time, often for life. There’s no question of their identity.”
Copland-Rudolph, a challenged voter who lives in Asheville and whose family dates back to that part of the state and the 1700s, checked old registration files that confirmed she had provided her Social Security number, she said. told CNN. She told CNN she saw names on challenge lists for people currently involved in Hurricane Helen response efforts.
“For us to have to go back and re-look at the vote, and for us to have to address this issue when we are so many years ahead, we need to be heard by the people who are submitting this challenge.” I can’t hear it,” she said.
Lani Dashi, a Chapel Hill voter on Griffin’s challenge list, pointed in an interview to the photo ID she must show to show she will vote this year under newly enacted North Carolina law. did.
“The fact that ID was required should eliminate any confusion about who gets to vote,” said Dasi, who confirmed her eligibility when she was elected three times to serve on the local school board. I did. “This is something that has a different agenda besides protecting the voting process.”
North Carolina GOP spokesperson blames state elections commission for “total indifference” in fixing problems with voter registration data that Republicans and others brought to attention before the election I suffered.
“This is a contributing factor to the long-term failure of the state election commission,” spokesman Matt Mercer said, noting the majority held by Democrats, “that has led us to this point.” said.
(In response to CNN’s inquiry, Griffin’s attorney referred CNN to an NC GOP spokesperson.)
In a court filing with the North Carolina Supreme Court, Griffin told the court there was no need to throw out those 60,000 votes.
Griffin’s first category of challenge is that the state court wants to consider the 5,509 overseas votes he claims were because the voters did not provide a copy of their photo ID.
The agency regulations that established that these voters were not subject to the state’s photo ID requirements went through a notice and comment process, noted by the state board, during which the state’s GOP weighed in. Regarding other aspects of the rules.
“What the state commission did is have no modest authority over what people voted for and what state law implemented,” said Mercer, the GOP spokesperson, referring to the photo ID requirement. Masu.
Notably, Griffin did not pose this type of challenge statewide. Instead, he challenged these voters only in four counties, all of which are Democratic. Mercer told CNN that only those counties were targeted in the election protest because that was the only data available at the time the judge’s protest was filed.
In a court filing, Griffin said that if those votes don’t put him over the top, the next vote to vote is for Americans overseas, whom he calls “never a resident.” Ta. They are overseas voters, often children of aliens overseas, who did not live in North Carolina but have the right to vote in the state under North Carolina law because their parents were residents. have.
That argument was raised by Republicans in a pre-election lawsuit that was rejected by both the state trial court and the Court of Appeals.
The North Carolina Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 Republican majority, suspended certification of Riggs’ victory earlier this month, but on Wednesday rejected Griffin’s request to directly control his agenda, instead giving his Consider sending the case to a lower state court first.
Still, Chief Justice Paul Newby, a Republican whom Griffin described as a mentor, wrote a concurrence that appeared to defend Griffin’s efforts, writing, “It is not about determining the outcome of an election.” . File an election protest. ”
(Riggs has recused himself from the issue. One Republican justice joined the remaining Democrats on the court in opposing the decision to suspend certification.)
Meanwhile, Riggs and the state commission are trying to move the case to federal court, where federal law calls for the “massive disenfranchisement” that Griffin is seeking, as he put it in a legal brief last week. can be argued to be prohibited. Democrats appealed the ruling after a U.S. district judge sent the case back to the state Supreme Court, and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments next Monday on whether the dispute belongs in a federal forum.
Whatever the next legal development, it seems likely that the court battle will drag on for months. Justice Anita Earls, a Democrat, warned in a partial dissent Wednesday that by withholding certification, the state Supreme Court may have opened a “Pandora’s Box.”
“If a losing candidate can make any argument about their vote in the election, no matter how frivolous, they can automatically receive a court-ordered stay on appeal, and the winner will be certified.” from being in office for more than a few months,” she wrote.
