Over the weekend, ProPublica released damning new reporting on Republican North Carolina Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin’s desperate attempts to contest lawfully cast ballots in order to overturn his election loss. In his latest attempt to throw out the legal ballots of North Carolina voters, Griffin has asked the very court he wishes to join to toss 5,500 military and overseas absentee ballots. 

In light of investigative reporting from ProPublica revealing Griffin used the same method to vote in 2019 and 2020 himself, DNC Executive Director Sam Cornale released the following statement:

“Losing North Carolina Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin has hit a new low as he attempts to throw out the very same military absentee ballots he used himself in multiple previous elections. While Griffin continues to humiliate himself in a hypocritical and desperate attempt to overturn the lawful results of his election, Democrats will defend the rights of all eligible voters, especially our military members and their families, to ensure the people’s choice – Justice Allison Riggs – takes her seat on the state Supreme Court bench. ”

Read more below:

ProPublica: North Carolina Supreme Court Candidate Wants Military Absentee Votes Tossed. Years Earlier, That’s How He Voted.

[Doug Bock Clark, 1/18/25]

• As a member of the Army National Guard in 2019 and 2020, Jefferson Griffin voted in North Carolina elections using military absentee ballots.
• Now, as he seeks to overturn the results of a state Supreme Court election that went against him, Griffin is asking that same court to disqualify the votes of around 5,500 people who voted in the same manner as he had.
• Since Democrat Allison Riggs won reelection to the state’s highest court last year by 734 votes, Griffin, now a Republican judge on the state’s Court of Appeals, has repeatedly tried to nullify her victory. Last week, the Republican majority on the state Supreme Court temporarily blocked the certification of Riggs’ win after Griffin filed a legal petition arguing that the election should be awarded to him.
• In a briefing, Griffin’s lawyers argued that ballots cast by overseas and military voters should not be counted if they did not also provide photo identification, such as a photocopy of a driver’s license. His position contradicts that of the state election board, which had issued a rule before the election stating that such voters did not have to provide an ID.
• Griffin’s use of these military ballots, which ProPublica confirmed using publicly available voting data and documents obtained via an open records request, has not been previously reported.
• Griffin is only trying to disqualify UOCAVA ballots in heavily Democratic counties, ignoring ballots from Republican areas, a ProPublica review of the contested ballots found. A data analysis by independent journalist Bryan Anderson found that Democratic ballots were disproportionately targeted, with Democrats being almost five times as likely as Republicans to have their ballots questioned by Griffin, though there are roughly equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans in North Carolina.
• “Judge Griffin’s targeting of military and overseas voters from four heavily Democratic counties lays plain his goal: toss votes to retroactively win an election he already lost,” Owen said.
• Griffin has gone to extraordinary lengths to have this matter heard by the state Supreme Court, which has a Republican majority, filing his petition directly to the high court instead of working through lower courts first, as is the standard process laid out in state law. ProPublica has reported that the court’s Republican chief justice, Paul Newby, has been described by Griffin as a “good friend and mentor,” and most of the spouses of the Republican justices have donated to Griffin’s most recent or previous campaigns.
• Claude Murray, a member of Common Defense, a veterans group that has had the ballots of some of its North Carolina members challenged, criticized Griffin’s actions. “The right to vote is something Americans often take for granted, but as veterans we know how precious it truly is. Judge Griffin knows this too and is choosing a different path,” Murray said. “It is shameful that he is now seeking to invalidate thousands of votes — including military members and their families — simply because he lost an election.”