CHARLOTTE (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — A lawsuit filed in a race for a North Carolina State Supreme Court race may be facing an uphill battle.
In late filings released Tuesday night, two conservative justices signaled a challenge of 60,000 ballots from Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin may not be able to overturn the results of an election where the Democratic incumbent, Allison Riggs, won by 734 votes.
When the Supreme Court moved to block the certification of the results on Tuesday, it seemed Griffin and the GOP had obtained a win.
“This is about as friendly as you can imagine, at least in terms of partisanship,” said Chris Cooper, a professor at Western Carolina University.
But later that same day, two additional opinions were handed down, both from conservative justices. Richard Dietz dissented, arguing throwing out votes would damage the integrity of elections. Justice Trey Allen supported hearing the case but noted that hearing arguments doesn’t mean Griffin will win out.
“There might be some justifiable concern among the Republican justices that it just breaks the integrity of the court to try to make this kind of argument,” said Duke Professor Mac McCorkle.
There is no way to predict how the court will end up ruling, but experts foresee challenges to come in races up and down the ballot if Griffin prevails.
“It’s entirely possible because many of the races, you know, say state legislative district races, you don’t even have 60,000 votes cast in those races,” said Eric Heberlig, a professor at UNC Charlotte.
Lawyers for both campaigns are expected to spend the rest of the month filing their arguments with the court. Justices do not have a set timeline for the cases usually, but experts expect them to move quickly to get this seat filled, so a decision could come down by the end of the month.
