Today, failed candidate Jefferson Griffin’s disgraceful attempts to overturn a free and fair election continued with a hearing in the North Carolina Court of Appeals at taxpayers’ expense. Yesterday, even the NC GOP Chair admitted that Jefferson Griffin is attempting to throw away the votes of North Carolinians who “did nothing wrong” in his campaign to deny Justice Allison Riggs her seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court. In response, DNC Deputy Communications Director Abhi Rahman released the following statement: 

“As disgraced, losing candidate Jefferson Griffin’s attacks on democracy continued in North Carolina’s Court of Appeals today, North Carolina’s GOP chair said the quiet part out loud: The 60,000 North Carolina voters Griffin is attempting to disenfranchise ‘did nothing wrong.’ Griffin and Republicans’ monthslong legal sham isn’t about election integrity, it’s about North Carolina Republicans sinking to any low imaginable to seize power – even if it means overturning a free and fair election.”  

News & Observer: Interview: NC GOP chair defends challenge of 65,000 votes in Supreme Court election

By Kyle Ingram 

• N&O: The largest group of challenged voters are those who didn’t have a Social Security number or driver’s license number in the state’s voter registration database. The GOP’s argument is that, without these numbers, an ineligible person could fall through the cracks and get on the voter rolls. If that’s the case, why have you not been able to identify a single ineligible person on that list over the last four months?
  
•  Simmons: It goes back to making sure that the data was consistent and complete.
  
•  With this particular set of individuals, I’m very sympathetic to them because, again, they did nothing wrong.

• N&O: The last bucket of challenged voters is military and overseas voters who didn’t show an ID. The State Board of Elections approved an exemption to the ID requirement for those voters. It wasn’t challenged at the time by the Republican Party or by Judge Griffin. Why is it a problem now?
  
• Simmons: It’s inconsistent with our state Constitution that mandates that individuals show up with an ID. So whether or not you show up in person, or whether you voted by absentee mail, you still had to be able to present a form of ID, and so Judge Griffin is asking for the courts to be able to provide clarification on that data set as well.
  
• N&O: But why did he only challenge voters who came from six primarily Democratic counties in this bucket?
  
• Simmons: That was the data that was available to us at the time.

• N&O: If you ultimately prevail in this case, and a court rules in Griffin’s favor, what sort of precedent do you think this creates — not just in North Carolina but nationwide?
  
• Is this setting up the possibility that any time there’s a narrow loss, you can pick away at different issues with registration until you wind up on top?
  
• Simmons: All that we’re continuing to seek is guidance from the courts on what should or should not be allowed when we’re talking about the participation of voters (and) making sure that every voter that has the right to participate in elections is allowed to do so. And those individuals that are in question, we (want to) have a resolution on their status.
  
• N&O: But the lawsuit isn’t just asking for guidance. The lawsuit has claimed that Judge Griffin is the rightful winner of the election and that he should be certified as the Supreme Court justice. What’s the distinction there? That’s not guidance, that’s a chance.