The mess that is the North Carolina Supreme Court race (04-07-2025--Hour2)

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[00:00:28] So I mentioned this topic briefly when we were talking to AP Dillon from the North State Journal in the first hour. And so we're going to spend some time on it this hour, which is the never ending race for our state Supreme Court seat. It's been contested. I think we are now like I think I saw Center Square reported. I think it's like 151 days since the election.

[00:00:56] And there's still no declared winner because of the lawsuits that have been bouncing all around. And we had a ruling on Friday from a three judge panel of appellate court judges, two Republicans, one Democrat, and the Republicans weighed in in favor of the Republican candidate, Jefferson Griffin.

[00:01:23] And the Democrat dissenting, and the Democrat dissenting in the opinion and weighing in in favor of Allison Riggs, the incumbent state Supreme Court justice, also a Democrat. So here's how Kyle Ingram over at the Charlotte Observer reported it.

[00:01:39] In a split decision, a panel of judges on the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled Friday that tens of thousands of votes cast in the contested 2024 Supreme Court race should be recounted and verified, potentially flipping the election results, which we actually don't know if it would flip the results or not.

[00:02:02] We don't. Because if they, when you're going to hear the word cure, which just means fix, they have to, that people, if you go in and cast a provisional ballot, for example, right, you show up to vote, and they're like, oh, you're not on our list.

[00:02:18] Like, oh, I should be on the list. Like, okay, well, here's a provisional ballot. You fill it out. And, and then we, we verify that it's actually you, you were supposed to vote in this correct precinct, or maybe you didn't have your ID. So you got like, you got like a week or something. I forget what the period is, but you have like a week or so to come in and show your ID at the Board of Elections.

[00:02:43] And then that cures the deficiency that you had that forced you to vote a provisional ballot. Okay. So when you hear the word cure, that's what they're talking about, that these 60,000 plus voters who have problems with their registration and, well, they're going to get, according to this ruling, they're going to get 15 business days.

[00:03:08] So essentially three weeks, right? Monday through Friday, they're going to get 15 business days to cure the problems with their registration. Now, a lot of people may not do that. They may not take the time to go to the Board of Elections or whatever, you know, they're not going to take the steps to cure the ballot. In which case then the vote would be thrown out. That's the idea. So that could turn the election.

[00:03:38] Because the election was only won by Allison Riggs, the incumbent Democrat, by like 734 votes. So if you're able to toss out, you know, a thousand of the 60,000 and they were all for her, then yeah, you could conceivably flip this race. So there are three main areas. The never residents, which I've talked about before.

[00:04:05] The 60,000 voters challenged because of deficiencies in their registration forms. And then the lack of a photo ID for military and overseas ballots that came in. And I've got the breakdown here someplace of the numbers of ballots that we're talking about someplace. Well, I'll find it. It doesn't matter. So back to the Charlotte Observer story.

[00:04:36] Because the overseas ballot one is like 1,000 or 1,200, I want to say. And then the never residents, it's fewer. I think it's like 200 or something. I forget what the exact breakdown is. But the biggest chunk is the 60,000 plus voters who had their eligibility challenged by Jefferson Griffin, the Republican, who is a sitting member of the Court of Appeals.

[00:05:05] He had run then for the state Supreme Court. And he was leading. Remember, he was leading on election night by 10,000 votes or so. And then when they count up all the provisional ballots in the days after, then he loses. That's a massive shift of like 10,000 to 11,000 votes. Right. Justice Allison Riggs, she said she would appeal the ruling.

[00:05:34] The decision on Friday comes nearly five months after the November election and is unlikely to be unlikely to be the final step in the contentious case, which has left North Carolina as the only state in the country with an uncertified statewide race. The ruling could be halted on appeal before the cure period goes into effect.

[00:05:55] So after Griffin narrowly lost his race to Riggs by 734 votes, he and the North Carolina Republican Party quickly challenged the validity of tens of thousands of ballots on untested legal grounds. Because the state board of here's here's my takeaway. I guess I should have said this at the at the outset. My takeaway on this, the board of elections has royally screwed this up.

[00:06:23] OK, that's the big headline for me. Had they been doing the job that they were supposed to be doing, this would not be in question. The 60,000 voters who have deficiencies in their registration would have already been alerted to this. The rule that says. And this is what it comes down to when you register to vote, you have to have some gov code number attached to you.

[00:06:51] OK, whether it's your social security number or your driver's license. OK, and if you don't have either of those, then the board of election assigns a number to you. And these 60,000 voters. They don't have them. And this was a law. That goes back to 2004. This is the Help America Vote Act. Have a remember. Remember.

[00:07:20] They did this after the Florida debacle in 2000. Bush v. Gore. Right. Like that whole scandal and the hanging chads and we didn't know who had won. And all of that scandal then turned into the Hava. H-A-V-A Help America Vote Act in like 2004. And the North Carolina General Assembly adopted this rule and it was signed by the governor. All Democrats.

[00:07:50] And yet the Board of Elections apparently hasn't ever complied with this stuff for these for these voters. So you got generally speaking, it's going to be mostly, I suspect, people who have been voting in the state for a long time. They've been voting in election after election after election, never being told that their registration is deficient somehow. Never being told they have to fix this when they should have been told you have to fix this.

[00:08:17] In Friday's decision, Judge Toby Hampson, a Democrat, dissented from the majority, noting that Griffin has not proven that any of the challenged voters are actually ineligible. Because they put all of the burden of proof here basically on the challenger, on Jefferson Griffin. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina, just a quick drive up the mountain.

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[00:09:41] Call or text 828-367-7068. Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. I read through the Court of Appeals ruling. Not once. Not twice. But three times I read through this thing. I read it once on the screen.

[00:10:05] And then when I went back to, because I wasn't going to print out 120 pages or whatever it was. 102 actually. And I know that because the dissenting opinion was like almost 70 pages. I'm like, this seems like it's more than half. And it was. It was like 66 pages of the 102 was the dissent from one guy. And the majority opinion from the two Republican judges, that was like 30-something pages.

[00:10:34] So, regardless. I read through it three times. I have highlighted only the important pieces. And I have to tell you, number one, the Board of Elections has really messed this all up. Okay, number one. But number two, some of these arguments that the dissenting judge, the Democrat on the Court of Appeals, some of the arguments that he lays out are persuasive. They actually are persuasive. I'm going to explain.

[00:11:06] First, the case is going to go back to Wake County Superior Court, which had ruled against Jefferson Griffin, the Republican, back in February. From there, according to the Charlotte Observer, the trial court was instructed to direct all 100 county boards of elections to, quote, expeditiously identify and notify the challenged voters. Okay, so if you were one of the 60,000 plus whatever, you were supposed to be notified.

[00:11:33] In a statement, Pat Gannon, a spokesman for the State Board of Elections, said that the agency will provide instructions to the affected voters if the court order goes into effect. Today, though, there was a request for a stay to the state Supreme Court.

[00:11:55] They went forward to the Democrat judge, Allison Riggs, who was on the Supreme Court, but she's recused herself from this stuff on the Supreme Court. So they've asked for a stay to stop this from starting because it's otherwise supposed to start, I think, at five o'clock today. He also said that the order would only affect voters selections in the one race, the state Supreme Court race.

[00:12:20] That's it. No other contest on your ballot is affected except the one that's being litigated. However, the court's decision could be halted before any of that happens, as Riggs is likely to appeal to the state Supreme Court. As I said, she just did. Since she has recused herself from this case, only six justices would hear the case, though. And if it were to end in a three to three deadlock.

[00:12:47] If that happens, then the most recent ruling of the lower court prevails. And that would be the one from Friday from this three judge panel. Riggs has said that if she loses at the state court level, she does intend to return the case to the federal court. So we are not anywhere close to this thing being done.

[00:13:14] It is being used to fundraise, not just by Riggs, but by Democrats all across the country. In fact, the North Carolina House Democrat leader, Robert Reeves. Oh, this is the statehouse, I should say. But the chair of the Democrat National Committee has also put out a statement on it. But the statehouse guy, Robert Reeves, he said, we cannot mince words at this point. The North Carolina Republican Party is one step closer to stealing an election in broad daylight.

[00:13:44] Which I think that's kind of insurrection-y. Just going by the old standards. The Court of Appeals ruled that the voters challenged for registration and ID issues would be given an opportunity to cure their ballots, to fix them.

[00:14:00] However, they ruled, this is the Court of Appeals, they ruled that the never residents who were explicitly granted voting eligibility more than a decade ago in a bipartisan state law, that they are ineligible to vote. The elections board spokesman, Pat Gannon, said that any voter who is concerned their registration information is incomplete should submit an updated voter registration form.

[00:14:27] Okay. So, let me go over to the ruling. So, this is from the majority ruling. This is the two Republicans. They write, on November 19th, Griffin filed six categories of election protests with the county boards of elections in every one of North Carolina's 100 counties. Three of the six issues, basically, are relevant to this appeal.

[00:14:57] The first is the incomplete voter registration in which Griffin challenges ballots that were cast by voters who are not properly registered because they purportedly have never provided either their driver's license numbers or the last four digits of their Social Security numbers with their registration. That's the first group. The second category, lack of photo ID for overseas voters.

[00:15:23] Griffin challenged ballots of certain citizens living overseas and of certain members of the military, their spouses, and dependents, which were cast pursuant to state law but failed to include a copy of their photo ID. But here's the thing. Reading the statute, I don't think they actually have to. I think it's a separate law. This is what the Democrat judge pointed out.

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[00:16:47] Mail orders are accepted too. Get all the details at createavideo.com. So this is from the judge dissenting on the Court of Appeals three-judge panel. He's a Democrat, but he goes over all of the issues that have been raised and he's, you know, he is on board with the Democrat Allison Riggs.

[00:17:12] And he does not think this case should be proceeding any further or that Jefferson Griffin has made his arguments well. Now, regarding the overseas ballots, these are the, this is the voter identification, you know, photo ID. When you are mailing absentee ballots, now you have to have a picture that you send in with your ballot, okay?

[00:17:39] Now, for the military people overseas, maintaining uniformity is key to accomplishing the stated goals of the original legislation on this. It said, quote,

[00:19:02] The purpose of the act can only be achieved through uniform state legislation. The General Assembly chose to participate in achieving this common goal by enacting the model legislation as Article 21A. That is a separate statute than your absentee balloting if you are not overseas.

[00:19:31] It's a different section of the law. Now, requiring North Carolina residents to submit photo identification when residents of other states that are also participating in this ULCAVA, right? Requiring our residents to submit photo ID when other states don't requires or it creates the exact lack of uniformity the legislation is intended to eliminate.

[00:19:59] So, in other words, you have a whole bunch of states that don't require photo ID for their absentee ballots. And because of that, we shouldn't be requiring it either because we want to have uniformity. But wait a minute. Don't, don't a majority of the states have it now? Have voter ID or, I don't know, do they have it for absentee balloting? Maybe they don't have it for absentee balloting. Maybe it's just in person.

[00:20:27] In accordance with this goal of creating uniformity, the General Assembly codified the procedures for military and overseas ballots separately from those for domestic absentee ballots. And when the General Assembly modifies one statute and not another, we do not infer that it intended the change to apply to both of the laws. That makes sense, right?

[00:20:50] You have the existing absentee ballot law, and then you come in with this other law, and then when you're changing one or the other, they're not applying the same changes to both at the same time. They've never said that. By enacting two separate statutes, the legislature clearly intended that there would be two distinct standards. I find this to be, this is a rational, logical argument.

[00:21:20] Voters who participated in this election were entitled to rely on the guidance of the Board of Elections. Even if Article 20 imposes a photo ID requirement on Article 21A voters, that's the other statute for overseas people, those overseas people submitted their ballots in accordance with all the rules and procedures that they were told, right? The Board of Elections told them that this is the way that you're supposed to vote.

[00:21:47] And if the Board of Elections was wrong about that, you don't penalize the voters who were innocent and were following the rules that they were advised on. Assuming the Board made a mistake in communicating those requirements, rejecting the ballots renders all military and overseas voters who cast their ballot in Guilford County disenfranchised through no fault of their own.

[00:22:12] It would have been effectively impossible for these citizens who were qualified to vote and properly registered to cast a valid vote because the proper procedures were not available to them. And then there are the never residents or the inherited residents. These are people who have parents working overseas, so they're living overseas, but they are domiciled in North Carolina.

[00:22:41] That's their home state. They were in North Carolina. They got a job transfer or whatever. They're working overseas. And they're over there for a long time. And they have kids that have never been in North Carolina. And then those kids grow up. They turn 18 years old. Where do they register to vote? They are American citizens. Where do those kids register to vote when they turn 18? That's the question. Those are the never residents.

[00:23:13] Right now, the law says that they are assumed to be inherited from their parents, North Carolinians. And so they would register to vote at that address that their parents had in North Carolina. And that's who's gotten challenged here. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do, too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why?

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[00:24:30] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. So the dissenting judge, Hampson, Democrat, he says, contrary to the petitioner, that's Jefferson Griffin, the Republican candidate for the state court of appeals, says it is not the board of elections that has permitted inherited residents to vote in our elections.

[00:24:57] So this is the people who have never been in North Carolina, have never expressed an intent to return to North Carolina because they were kids. They were born overseas. They are an American citizen because they're born to their parents who are there on work related whatever. And they turn 18. They can register to vote. Where do they vote? What state do they vote in?

[00:25:22] And so they, according to our statutes, the General Assembly enacted the law that allows these individuals to vote in North Carolina. Quote, as a general rule, the domicile of every person at his birth is the domicile of the person on whom he is legally dependent. The petitioner, Griffin, cites no authority.

[00:25:52] And I know of none, says the judge, in support of his bare assertion that a child's domicile of origin expires when they turn 18. So that's the argument, essentially, that Griffin is making, that if you're a kid, your domicile of origin, you know, you were born in North Carolina, your parents then move overseas to work, that somehow or another that that expires when you turn 18.

[00:26:18] But he offers no support, no evidence to justify this position. He says the claim is unsupported. It is also antithetical to our longstanding consistent understanding of what a domicile is. He says one acquires a domicile of origin at birth and that domicile continues until a new one is acquired.

[00:26:44] Those who did not obtain domicile by birth may still be domiciled in North Carolina by operation of law. A domicile by operation of law is one which the law determines or attributes to a person without regard to his intention or the place where he is actually living.

[00:27:04] The majority, the two Republican judges on the court of appeals, makes the unfounded assertion that these voters have never indicated they intend to live in this state. This willfully misses the point. These voters are simply not required to make any such indication. The majority effectively invents a new requirement for this group to fit its own agenda and gives them no opportunity to satisfy it.

[00:27:31] The voters in this group checked a box on a card indicating I am a U.S. citizen living outside the country and I have never lived in the United States. That's the question they were asked on the form and they checked the box. No one's asked them, do you intend to come back to North Carolina? It's not asked. So how do you know that they don't intend to return?

[00:27:54] No one, including the petitioner or the majority, has any idea whatsoever how many of these voters would have selected an option indicating that they also intend to live in North Carolina. Had that question been presented? But it wasn't. So again, problem with the forms, right? Further, the majority's perspective entirely upends our longstanding precedent regarding domicile.

[00:28:20] Again, although an adult may not inherit domicile, a child clearly does. And a child retains that domicile until they affirmatively establish a new one. Right? So you turn 18, you register to vote, still living at home with mom and dad, and your home is, you know, in the U.K. because your mom and dad work for some company that's got an operation there. He said, merely living somewhere is not enough to establish domicile.

[00:28:50] And this is true. This is true. For example, when I started working up in Asheville, I wasn't sure if that radio gig was going to last a long time because, you know, it's a radio gig. And so I was going up there. I rented a little apartment, and I kept my voter registration here at the property I owned with my wife. And she continued to work here.

[00:29:17] And I would drive up on, you know, Sunday night or Monday morning. I would do the show. I would stay in the apartment, and then I would drive home. So I never registered to vote in Asheville. I shouldn't say never because I eventually did, but after we sold the house in Charlotte. And then I got fired. But, like, that's the way you do it. It's the place you intend to return. And so you can reside someplace, but that's not your domicile.

[00:29:47] More to the point, the General Assembly enacted legislation that by its plain language guarantees the right of children and dependents of North Carolinians living abroad to vote in our elections. So this is state law. So I'm glad that they hashed this thing out in the courts. But this seems to be pretty straightforward that there is a deficiency in the law and in the forms.

[00:30:16] And so it's going to get appealed. Because this judge that I just read from, he did not win. That was the dissenting opinion. And then there was the big issue for, like, the 60,000 people was whether or not they were notified. There was a big problem with this. Like, how did they get notified?

[00:30:35] So the Griffin campaign and the Republican Party sent out, like, postcards to people, to the 60,000 people, and notified them that your vote may not be counted in this race. And then they had one of those little QR codes, those little squares with all the crazy digital black dots and stuff all over it. And so you scan that, and then that takes you to a site where it's got all of the complaints and voter files and all of this.

[00:31:04] And what the, what Riggs and the Democrats and this dissenting judge argued was that that's not a way to notify people because it looks like a junk mail. It's a postcard. And you're relying on people to use a QR code, and they may not have a cell phone. They may not know what a QR code is.

[00:31:26] So I ask you, if you got a random piece of mail from the Democrat Party and it said, scan this QR code to find out if your vote's going to count, would you scan it? I wouldn't. I'd throw it away. And so that's the argument that this judge lays out as to why a lot of these voters of the 60,000 may not have thought it was a legitimate thing for them to look.

[00:31:54] Now, the Republican side, and they're like, hey, the county boards of elections should have been sending this stuff out. They should have been notifying these people that their ballots were, or their registrations were deficient. They had 20 years to fix this problem, and they were warned about it before the election through litigation. So they knew this was a problem. And they knew about it for a long time.

[00:32:20] This is what I mean, like, the list maintenance aspect at the Board of Elections has been just a dumpster fire for my entire career here. My entire adult life in North Carolina, going back to 1999 here, it seems like this kind of stuff has always been a problem. And, like, if you want people to have faith and confidence in the system, you've got to do the proper list maintenance. That's the first thing you need to do.

[00:32:50] All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalendershow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.