The Daily Populous Tuesday April 8th, 2025 morning edition
Authored by esquire.com and submitted by Esquire

That election result in Wisconsin certainly gave us a few days of comfort and joy. But less encouraging events are afoot in the Tar Heel State.

Thousands of North Carolina voters could soon have their 2024 ballots thrown out, the state Court of Appeals ruled Friday in a case that could flip to Republicans another seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court months after the November election. If the ruling stands, the State Board of Elections would be required to ask more than 60,000 voters to provide proof of their identity. Anyone who doesn’t respond will have their ballot thrown out—an outcome that could tilt the narrow race for the high-court seat in favor of the Republican candidate, Jefferson Griffin, who challenged the ballots.

Griffin, who is a judge on the Court of Appeals, challenged Democratic incumbent Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs for her seat on the high court in the 2024 election. Recounts showed that Riggs received 734 more votes than Griffin. But the winner of the race hasn’t been made official, while Griffin challenges the voters’ registration and the validity of their ballots. Riggs, who has joined the state board in the lawsuit, said Friday that she would fight the ruling. “We will be promptly appealing this deeply misinformed decision that threatens to disenfranchise more than 65,000 lawful voters and sets a dangerous precedent, allowing disappointed politicians to thwart the will of the people,” she said in a statement.

We in the shebeen have been following this one for a while. Tracking it has been easy because this case stinks like week-old mackerel. What Griffin wants, literally, is that the rules of the election be changed ex post facto. The lone Democrat on the appeals court, Judge Toby Hampson, pointed this out in a barbed dissent.

Hampson wrote that the voters followed every rule they were told to during the election, and that Griffin shouldn’t be allowed to change the rules after the fact to throw out their ballots. “Changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes in an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the Constitution,” Hampson wrote. “Make no mistake: should the majority’s decision be implemented, the impact will be to disenfranchise North Carolina voters even though they were eligible to vote on election day.”

In other words, the voters whose eligibility is being challenged voted according to the rules that prevailed at the time, and Griffin is arguing that the rules should be different now that the election is over. This is not how this is supposed to work.

Meanwhile, the Republican majority on the appeals court seems to have taken up permanent residence in that magical land where lives Justice Samuel Alito—a place where the law exists in a sweet-smelling vacuum beyond the daily lives of ordinary Americans and far from the sweaty tribulations of vile politics.

The judges wrote Friday that they weren’t swayed by arguments that Griffin selectively challenged only some voters and that his effort was motivated less by a concern for election integrity and more by a desire to win the election. “The Court is not concerned with the race, sex, age, or party affiliation of any contested voter or the outcome,” the ruling states.

And I, as you know, am the Tsar of all the Russias.

Suddenly, Riggs, who won the election and who has prevailed in two recounts, and who has been fighting off all the legal challenges brought by Griffin, has a long pull up a dirt road. The voters Griffin is trying to disenfranchise have 15 business days to bring their paperwork into alignment with the rules that apply now, five months after the election. This is not how anything is supposed to work.

ClearlyDemented on April 7th, 2025 at 23:23 UTC »

This has been halted by the NC Supreme Court

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article303667326.html

KinkyPaddling on April 7th, 2025 at 23:14 UTC »

This is how December 2026 will look, people. Any flipped seats in red or purple states will be rejected as stolen elections.

TripleReward on April 7th, 2025 at 21:55 UTC »

Changing the election rules after the election is straight up fascism.

No democracy does that.