Dems cheer as court rules against NC Republican's challenge to more than 65,000 ballots

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Just hours after a hearing about Judge Jefferson Griffin's challenge to more than 65,000 ballot papers in the state Supreme Court election, a state jury president upheld the state electoral commission's rejection of those complaints in a late Friday decision.

Federal Reserve judge William Pittman ruled in favour of the North Carolina State Electoral Board on its rejection of objections to three different categories of voters – military and overseas voters who didn't include photo IDs with their postal votes, early and absentee voters who Griffin claimed had incomplete voter registrations, and a group Griffin called "Non-Resident Citizens", consisting of children of North Carolina citizens residing overseas.

"The court has decided as a matter of law that the board's decision wasn't broken any rules, wasn't beyond the law, was made properly and not because of a mistake in the law," Pittman said in a ruling handed down on Friday arvo.

Both Griffin and incumbent Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs, his opponent in the closely contested election, attended the hearing in person at the Wake County Superior Court on Friday morning.ázi Pittman oversaw the hearing, which involved lawyers for Griffin and the Electoral Board, as well as those representing Riggs and the impacted voters and non-profit groups in North Carolina.

“After reviewing more than 5,000 pages in the court record and all the paperwork lodged – I've got some other info that I'll need to go through today, so I'll need to deliberate, “ he said at the hearing's conclusion. “I can assure you I'll do it as quickly as I can.”

Below the applicable state court will hear the case, however, jurisdiction over any potential federal civil rights matters will be reserved for the federal courts.

“Today's rulings against Judge Griffin's objections to more than 65,000 votes are a win for the people of North Carolina and for the rule of law in our state,” said Justice Riggs in a statement. “It's the voters who decide the outcome of elections and I'm committed to keeping up this fight and protecting the rights laid out in North Carolina's constitution.”

He ( says he's chucking out military and overseas ballots he reckons got received improperly due to not having a photo ID, as well as more than 60,000 early and absentee ballots from people who voted but didn't have the right info on their rego forms.

Solicitors for Griffin and the Electoral Commission had a squabble over more than two hours on Friday on Griffin's challenge – and specifically, whether it was a last-minute bid to change the election rules, or to enforce them as they were already in place, as well as whether challenged voters got sufficient notice.

The Griffin argument

Craig Schauer, a lawyer for Griffin, defended his client's decision to only dispute early and postal ballots from voters whose registration forms didn't include a driver's licence number or a partial Social Security Number, but didn't challenge votes cast in person on Election Day.

“The state board doesn’t figure out until after the protest deadline who voted on Election Day; so, you can’t work out who voted on Election Day and include them in an election protest,” Schauer said. “Second, my understanding is, those people’s ballots can’t be retrieved from Election Day.”

He pointed out that it’s irrelevant that errors in the database showed some people’s registrations were missing driver’s licence details or just a part of their Medicare number — instead, Schauer said, “this just proves the rule” by allowing some voters who have followed the proper procedures to put their details in and have their say.

“Just 'cos there's an exception which allows you to vote if you've already got this info and it's not matching, it just shows you should've given the info in the first place, anyway,” Schauer said. “It's not like it's excusing not givin' the info in the first place, that's still gotta happen.”

He drew an analogy to someone contesting their neighbour's vote at an election, knowing their neighbour has a conviction, but opposing voting by others with a similar history in other electoral districts.

Giz a fair dinkum, they're in different situations. The bloke in Wake County had their vote queried, whereas the others in different counties didn't cop any flak with their votes.

“Retroactive disenfranchisement”

Ray Bennett, a lawyer for Riggs, labelled Griffin's challenge as a "retroactive disqualification", calling it "undemocratic" and in breach of state law.

“From what my mates on the other side are saying, you'd think this whole election protest thing is just a normal, everyday process that happens all the time,” Bennett said. “But the truth is, this is a one-off. The same arguments have been put forward in other states before, but they've never got up.”

He accused Griffin of "cutting corners" when it came to notifying punters whose votes were being questioned, claiming he was obliged to chuck all parties proper official notice. Instead, Bennett said, Griffin and the NSW Liberals sent out a "postcard" addressed to the voter or the person living there now - a move identical to election campaign junk mail.

Bennett said the notice was also defective in that it only provided a QR code to view the election protests, which took voters to a set of 300 links for each individual challenge made by Griffin, that "often featured attachments with dozens or hundreds of names attached that weren't sorted in alphabetical order". Some of the challenged voters, he said, didn't own mobile phones, or if they did, just weren't used to using QR codes.

Bennett reckons Griffin's challenge is an attempt to "change the rules after the game's already been played" – and she points out that the election rules he's complaining about were either tried before the election and knocked back, or weren't had a crack at while there was still time.

In his view, Griffin's arguments in favour of requiring photo ID's with military and overseas ballots are based on policy grounds, not on the state constitution or laws — he pointed out that the North Carolina Constitution only mandates photo ID for in-person voting, and it was the State Parliament that expanded this to absentee ballots. He said Griffin's lawyers get their facts wrong by mixing up two different bits of legislation that don't explicitly require photo ID for defence personnel voters.

…“Attempting to enforce something that doesn’t have to be done under existing state laws”

Terence Steed, lawyer for the Board of Elections, agreed with Bennett that the postcards didn't constitute "detailed, effective notice" – as he said requires the materials in question, not just "a link to thousands of pages of spreadsheets."

He said that even if voters' registrations are missing the details Griffin's saying they should have, that doesn't make them ineligible to vote – the law in question didn't introduce new rules or criteria for voting, and was really just trying to standardize voting processes into one system. He also pointed out that Griffin hadn't actually found any voters who didn't have the right information, just voters whose details couldn't be found in the digital database.

“Fair dinkum, these blokes and sheilas are just ordinary folk from all over the place who've done everything right, as far as we can tell, when getting registered, but a fair few may not have got a licence or a tax file number sorted in the system, for no bloody good reason.”

The bloke making the petition is trying to force a requirement that doesn't exist under state law," Steed said. "He can't point to a single actual voter who's registered without this info, he's only found people who might not have filled out a certain field in their registration records.

I am committed to sticking to the laws of the land...

Riggs chatted with people in the courthouse after the hearing wrapped up, and he was trailed by voters who dished out their experiences of having their votes questioned. Some said they never scored a postcard at all, while others struggled to find their names on it, even though their name was actually in the list. A bloke reported asking for the supposed "incomplete registration" doona, only to find it had all the details Griffin mentioned.

“Regardless of how long it takes, I'm committed to upholding the rule of law, standing up for the voters who put me in Parliament and keeping the faith with the 65,000 people in my electorate whose democratic rights would be undermined if the case for relief is successful, and making sure we hold any MP who disregards their oath to uphold and protect both the state and federal constitutions accountable,” Riggs said.

Hilary Klein, a lawyer who represents some of the people whose votes have been disputed, had said straight after the hearing that she was expecting Judge Pittman to make a decision sometime in the coming weeks – but it was ultimately delivered much sooner. She said it was likely there would still be appeals regardless of what the outcome of the hearing was – a scenario that could potentially see the case go all the way back up to the North Carolina Supreme Court.

After that, the parties in the case may apply for a stay on the decision of the High Court, and then have their say on the federal civil rights issues involved in the case, through the federal courts. This could potentially lead to a drawn-out legal process in the months ahead.

An overflow crowd

The North Shore courtroom where the case was held was oversubscribed, with more than 100 people trying to get in after a strong demand from voting rights groups to attend - several viewers were forced to wait outside.

I didn’t find any changing needed.

G'day, I'm here to remind people that their vote's worth somethin' and they've got to put up a fight to get it," he said. "If I've gotta be the only bloke standin' up for 60,000 folk, then that's what I'll do.

This is the case that Trump would have brought if he hadn't quite won in North Carolina and that's a fair dinkum national story," said Ann Webb, policy director at Common Cause North Carolina. "This is important for all of us to be following, and it's got implications not only for all North Carolina's voters – every single one of 'em – but voters right across the country.

Lynne Bonner contributed to this report.

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