As RedState previously reported, Election Day was a good day for Republican judicial candidates in North Carolina, where they won all three appeals court races, flipping a seat in the process as icing on the cake.
Also on the ballot this year in the Old North State was the race between North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs and Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin. A Griffin victory would give the state court a 6-1 GOP victory. A Riggs win would keep it 5-2 GOP.
On the Wednesday morning after the election, Griffin had about 10,000 more votes, which some people said would have led some people to believe he was the winner.
But that wasn’t the case as county election officials continued to count mail-in ballots, including some received on Election Day as well as those received from overseas military voters had until Reception on Thursday the 14th (the day before the district election took place). There was also a need to review the provisional ballots and decide which ballots could be included in the total.
Over the course of what was supposed to be a 10-day survey period, Griffin’s lead gradually diminished as more counties completed their counts and made their results official. By midday on Friday (November 15), the day the final official results were due to be released, his lead had fallen to around 3,900 votes.
However, this is where things got a little hairy.
Everyone was waiting for Wake County’s preliminary numbers to be counted and uploaded. For those who don’t know, Wake County is North Carolina’s most populous county. It is also a very democratic district. And even though they were “finished.” acting“In the provisional figures on Thursday the 14th, they stated that the figures would not appear in the state election Results Page until Friday:
There is no reason why these numbers shouldn’t be uploaded and counted tonight. Meck does this, as do counties across the state. What reason does Wake have for not uploading the results into the system and publicly releasing the updated counts after they are tabulated this evening? #ncpol https://t.co/9OaKEQ3tcv
– Lawrence Shaheen Jr. (@LawrenceShaheen) November 14, 2024
But as Griffin’s lead wavered up and down throughout the day Friday, there was nothing to be gained from Wake County. Later in the afternoon, his lead began to steadily decline as more provisional votes were added and the total votes from smaller districts were officially announced.
Still, nothing came from Wake.
However, around 8 p.m., they finally updated their numbers and magically put Riggs in the net just enough to overtake Griffin by about 150 votes.
There was discontent among people on social media (including Best regards) that the way it all played out didn’t exactly inspire confidence in the electoral process.
Equally galling was that about an hour before Wake released the results, the state Board of Elections issued a memo pointing out that several precincts (with one half-sized precinct, Forsyth, going for Kamala Harris) failed to finish on time We will meet again on Monday to conclude – even with a Supreme Court seat (and a few other state legislative elections) on the line:
Simply pathetic, @NCSBEConsidering we have a tight Supreme Court race with the Republican nominee currently in the lead, the optics are terrible and make it seem like some districts need “extra time” to see how many ballots are needed to bring certain candidates to the top. #ncpol https://t.co/DRJbk27XDU
— Sister Toldjah 💙 (@sistertoldjah) November 16, 2024
It was also in people’s minds What happened in New Hanover County, where party registration takes place roughly divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats (but with many more independent voters):
On Monday, County Manager Chris Coudriet informed commissioners that the county attorney’s office had suggested the elections office hire outside counsel in delicate of an apparent violation of state law.
According to a Nov. 6 statement from Elections Director Rae Hunter-Havens, mail-in ballots received after Oct. 31 would be processed and counted along with provisional ballots on Nov. 14. The “administrative cutoff” of October 31 differs from state law; General Statute 163-234 notes that “mail-in ballots received before Election Day will be counted on Election Day.”
All mail-in ballots received on Election Day will be counted during the 10-day voting period.
Given that at least one county appears to be violating state law and several others did not complete their reporting by Friday’s deadline, many people here are understandably scratching their heads and asking the question of how this could have happened:
If you were trying to convince conspiracy theorists that you were going to steal the election, this is how you would count the votes. The sheer level of incompetence boggles the mind. You had a job! And 10 days for it! #NCPOL https://t.co/WvWlD10UCC
– Brent Woodcox (@BrentWoodcox) November 16, 2024
The crap… Why the hell is there a “deadline” if it’s movable? https://t.co/t15NRvnBir
– JL (@aggou) November 16, 2024
As for the current state of the race: Riggs right now leads Griffin by… 24 votes. On Monday, whoever ends up in the lead at the end of the race is expected to be ahead by no more than about 200 points, which will likely result in a call from the runner-up for a recount:
One district reported survey results to the @ncsbe website last night, so we now have a NC Supreme Court justice election by a margin of [checks notes] 24 votes.
This corresponds to a margin of 0.00043329% of the votes cast.
Some districts will not complete the acquisition until Monday.#ncpol pic.twitter.com/UiSiLEDnXF
— Chris Cooper (@chriscooperwcu) November 16, 2024
Interesting fact about close North Carolina Supreme Court races: The last race was in 2020, when Republican Associate Justice Paul Newby defeated Chief Justice Cheri Beasley (D) by 401 votes. This came after Newby had a razor-thin lead over Beasley on election night requested a recount shortly afterwards. Things went wrong for them when it turned out that the only “new” votes to be counted in their campaign were those coming from the Democrats:
In 2020, losing candidate Beasley (D) conceded after reports that the campaign hid the fact that it only aimed to count additional Democratic voters, not Republican ones. https://t.co/zB9vvR7NlA #ncpol pic.twitter.com/c2qSIJkEID
— Mike Rusher (@mjrusher) November 10, 2024
There’s certainly never a numb moment in North Carolina politics.
As for the current fight between Riggs and Griffin, we’ll keep you updated on the latest developments.
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