The Republican majority on the North Carolina Supreme Court temporarily blocked state officials from certifying Democratic Justice Allison Riggs as the winner of her court seat.
In a 5-1 vote, the Republican majority on the state Supreme court ruled to prevent the North Carolina State Board of Elections from certifying the results of the race while Riggs’ Republican opponent, Jefferson Griffin, challenge the results of the election, NBC News reported.
Riggs, who was appointed to the court in 2023, recused herself from Tuesday’s ruling.
Riggs defeated Griffin by 734 votes in the election. The narrow margin triggered a series of recounts that reaffirmed her victory.
However, Griffin is challenging the legitimacy of 60,000 ballots arguing that many of these voters didn’t have a driver’s license number or Social Security number on file in their voter registration records. He also alleged that overseas voters failed to provide photo identification with their ballots.
The state elections board had already rejected Griffin’s claims which led him to ask the state Supreme Court to intervene.
The state supreme court has set a deadline for all briefs in the case to be filed by Jan. 24.
North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton in a statement said Riggs had “won her seat fair and square and that will continue to be demonstrated before the courts.”
“He is hellbent on finding new ways to overthrow this election but we are confident that the evidence will show, like they did throughout multiple recounts, that she is the rightful winner in this race,” she said.
Former Gov. Roy Cooper wrote on X that “Republicans want to toss thousands of legal votes in the trash because they don’t like the outcome.”
“This shouldn’t be about party politics — this should be about making sure every vote counts & that our elections still mean something,” he added.
Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison said the state court ruling is “an affront to this country’s foundational values of democracy and the rule of law.”
“One day after the four-year anniversary of January 6, Republicans are once again attempting to overturn an election in plain sight,” he said.
