The basis is federal court abstention, giving the state courts the first chance to work this out. But the court tells the lower federal district court to retain jurisdiction to deal with federal issues that could potentially still be in the case after the matter makes it way through the state courts.
Category Archives: judicial elections
“After a Judge’s Death, Renewed Scrutiny for a Georgia Loophole That Can Nullify Elections”
After losing his reelection bid last summer, Georgia State Court Judge Stephen Yekel turned to a loophole in state law that could have erased the result and blocked the winner from taking office.
In Georgia, if judges announce they’ll quit at some point before the end of their term, they hand the governor the ability to choose their replacement for the next two years. Even if an election was about to be held for their seat, that race gets canceled and kicked years down the road. Even if an election for their seat has already happened, a judge could still resign after they’ve lost, giving the governor the power to make an appointment that would nullify the result.
Evidently looking to trigger this rule, Yekel told Governor Brian Kemp in a Dec. 6 letter that he intended to resign effective Dec. 30, just one day before his term was set to end. Yekel, who lost to challenger Melissa Calhoun in a nonpartisan runoff for the seat last June, told Kemp that a low-turnout election shouldn’t decide the next judge, writing, “the office of State Court Judge of Effingham is too important to be decided by only 6% of the eligible voters.”
But Kemp refused to accept Yekel’s resignation and appoint his successor, which would have retroactively canceled the election. Replying to Yekel in a Dec. 12 letter, Kemp said that a resignation is only effective once a governor agrees to it and that he could not accept the judge’s “attempted resignation,” writing that it would be unfair to override the results over a “legal technicality.”
On Dec. 31, his last day in office, Yekel was found dead in his chambers from an apparent suicide. Calhoun took office on Jan. 1 as planned after Kemp issued no order on that day.
While local authorities said they were investigating the circumstances of Yekel’s death, his attempt to resign and request that the governor appoint his successor has sparked demands that state officials close the loophole that could have canceled his election.
“You’re creating an opportunity to bypass an election,” Sara Tindall Ghazal, a member of the Georgia Board of Elections, told Bolts. “If the judge or the governor doesn’t like the outcome of the election, there’s this opportunity to encourage the incumbent to resign and then fill the seat.” …
“A federal appeals court considers who should decide whether NC votes are thrown out”
In a pivotal hearing in the North Carolina Supreme Court elections case, the lawyer representing the state Board of Elections faced a barrage of questions from a federal court of appeals judge about the appropriateness of calling back to federal court a case that the state Supreme Court had acted on.
The state Board of Elections and Justice Allison Riggs are appealing a federal district court judge’s decision to send back to state court an elections case in which Republican Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin wants to invalidate more than 60,000 votes.
Griffin had asked the state Supreme Court to order the elections board to erase those votes, believing that doing so would allow him to erase Riggs’ 734 vote lead.
Last week, the state Supreme Court dismissed Griffin’s request that it order the elections board to throw out ballots and told the Wake County Superior Court to start a trial. It also kept in place a block on certification of a winner in the race.
The case has taken several turns in the weeks since the state Board of Elections dismissed his protests. The panel of three judges on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is considering whether the case should be heard in federal court or stay in state court. Riggs and the state Board of Elections want the case in federal court, while Griffin wants state courts to consider the claims.
Where the case is heard could determine the winner of the election. The state Supreme Court race is the last statewide race in the nation that does not have a declared winner. The high court currently features a 5-2 Republican majority, including Riggs, who has recused herself from the case.
The courtroom in Richmond was packed Monday afternoon with North Carolina voters. Some spectators were directed to an overflow room.
“I can’t believe that so many people would be interested in this case that was so procedural,” said Judge Paul V. Niemeyer, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush.
Niemeyer appeared to be the most skeptical of the request to reverse the federal district court judge’s order sending Griffin’s case to state court.
“If we are able to issue an order saying ‘ give us the case,’ we get a case that has been dismissed,” he said.
“Every single case I’ve read, every single case, where there’s a remand, the assumption was that the state court had it, and how do we get it back. If the state court legitimately has it, we have to respect its orders.”…
“They Followed North Carolina Election Rules When They Cast Their Ballots. Now Their Votes Could Be Tossed Anyway.”
A Republican judge has spent more than two months trying to overturn his narrow defeat for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat by arguing that around 60,000 ballots should be tossed out. But many residents have only recently learned that their votes are in danger of not being counted and say they have done nothing wrong.
ProPublica has heard from dozens of voters who expressed astonishment and anger at state appeals court Judge Jefferson Griffin’s ongoing attempts to cancel their ballots. The claim at the heart of Griffin’s challenge: No ballot should be counted for a voter whose registration is missing a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number.
The state election board and a Donald Trump-appointed federal judge have dismissed Griffin’s argument that the missing information should invalidate votes. What’s more, state election officials have made clear that there are many legitimate reasons for driver’s license or Social Security information to be missing. And it’s not as if voters can cast ballots without confirming who they are. North Carolina law requires that people verify their identity at the polls — in most cases by showing a driver’s license.
“One of 2025’s Biggest Battles Over Abortion Rights Has Already Begun” (Wisconsin Supreme Court Election)
Tens of millions of dollars flooding into a state election. A nakedly political candidate for a judgeship. Huge policy stakes for a key battleground state.
Two years ago, a race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court vividly demonstrated how local elections that once flew under the radar were becoming expensive, nationalized and highly partisan affairs.
Now, Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin are preparing for yet another contest in April that will again determine control of the state’s top court — and with it the fate of abortion rights, labor rights and two congressional districts.
The race is likely to be even more partisan, negative and expensive than the 2023 election, whose $56 million price tag shattered national spending records for a judicial contest….
Representative Tom Tiffany, who represents northern Wisconsin, was among several Republicans who said the Supreme Court election was more important than the state’s 2026 governor’s race.
“There’s a virtual guarantee that they will overturn the congressional maps if Ms. Crawford wins this race,” Mr. Tiffany said. “It’s no longer an academic exercise that this is what could happen. This is what is happening.”
Republicans have pointed to a weak candidate and a divisive primary in their 2023 Supreme Court defeat, when a conservative former justice, Dan Kelly, lost by 11 percentage points to Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge.
A larger factor was Justice Protasiewicz’s decision to accept an endorsement and funding from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which funneled $10 million to her campaign, while Mr. Kelly declined direct funding from the Republican Party of Wisconsin. He relied instead on outside groups and super PACs, which spent less and paid far more for television advertising than he could have as a candidate.
Brian Schimming, the Wisconsin Republican chairman, said he had maintained most of the party infrastructure that won the state for Mr. Trump to help Judge Schimel. But more important, Mr. Schimming said, is how he hopes to funnel money from conservative donors through the state Republican Party, which can accept unlimited contributions and send the cash to endorsed candidates.
“This race is not Dan Kelly the sequel,” Mr. Schimming said. “The party is very, very committed to making sure that we are competitive in April.”…
“In blow to GOP, NC Supreme Court won’t fast-track lawsuit seeking to throw out 60,000 ballots” (Divided opinions suggest an ultimate possible 3-3 tie in this case)
Will Doran of WRAL:
North Carolina’s Republican-majority state Supreme Court ruled partially against the Republican candidate seeking to join its ranks, rejecting his effort to fast-track a lawsuit seeking to throw out more than 60,000 people’s 2024 ballots.
The case — which could decide a razor-thin, undecided race for a seat on the high court — must go to trial first, the justices ruled ruled Wednesday, shooting down what it called an “extraordinary” effort to skip a trial, bypass the state Court of Appeals, and have the issue decided quickly and directly by the state’s highest court.
Wednesday’s decision was essentially unanimous. However, in an indication that the justices are aware of the close attention on the case, every member of the court wrote a separate opinion explaining his or her decision — except for Riggs due to her recusal.
The majority opinion sending the case back to trial was written by Republican Justice Trey Allen. The court’s other Republican justices — Chief Justice Paul Newby and justices Phil Berger Jr., Tamara Barringer and Richard Dietz — each wrote concurring opinions. The court’s other Democratic justice, Anita Earls, wrote an opinion that concurred in part and dissented in part.
Earls said she would have gone a step further and fully denied Griffin, allowing Riggs to be officially declared the winner. Allowing the election to remain in limbo while this goes back to trial, she said, sets a troubling precedent for future elections. “It sets up courts to be the arbiters of election outcomes instead of voters, and weakens faith in the democratic processes of this state,” she wrote.
You can find the set of opinions at this link. It is possible the Court will ultimately divide 3-3 over what to do, which could leave the lower court opinion in place unless NC has a different way of dealing with tie votes on courts than the normal procedure.
“Riggs seeks earliest possible oral argument in NC Supreme Court election dispute”
“Riggs, Griffin spar over proper forum for NC Supreme Court election dispute”
The two candidates in North Carolina’s recent Supreme Court election disagree about the proper forum for resolving a legal dispute involving the election. Republican Jefferson Griffin argues that the case belongs in state court. Democrat Allison Riggs counters that federal courts should settle the election fight.
Riggs and the North Carolina Democratic Party filed briefs Wednesday evening with the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals. Both made the case for federal review of the election dispute.
The State Board of Elections and left-of-center activist groups working with Democratic operative Marc Elias’ law firm agree with Riggs and the state Democratic Party. They filed briefs after 11 p.m.
The 4th Circuit will hold oral arguments in the case on Jan. 27.
Riggs, the appointed incumbent, leads Griffin, a state appellate judge, by 734 votes out of 5.5 million ballots cast in the November election. Recounts have confirmed Riggs’ lead.
Griffin has been seeking a writ of prohibition from the state Supreme Court to block elections officials from counting more than 60,000 ballots Griffin has labeled “unlawful.”
“In North Carolina, Republicans Try to Reverse a Supreme Court Election Loss”
Judge Griffin’s protest includes two arguments against counting a few thousand ballots cast by overseas voters that one Republican justice said this week may have merit. But its centerpiece is a claim that some 60,000 voters in the Supreme Court election failed to list a required proof of identity — either the last four digits of a Social Security number or a driver’s license number — when they originally registered, as long as two decades ago.
Although the omissions stemmed from a mistake in preparing the registration forms, he has argued, it leaves the voters’ eligibility in question, and their ballots should be thrown out unless they provide legitimate numbers within a limited correction period set by the state.
Questions about those omissions had spread in conservative circles for more than a year, and were teed up for use by Republican political strategists well before Judge Griffin’s November loss.
A conservative election integrity advocate, Carol Snow, analyzed state election records in 2023. She complained to the State Board of Elections that December that some 225,000 registrations over the past two decades had incorrectly omitted legally required driver’s license or Social Security numbers.
The state and national Republican Parties made political use of her complaint in a lawsuit filed last summer, which sought to strike inaccurately registered voters from the North Carolina rolls. In an email exchange, Ms. Snow said that party officials asked for her help on the issue, but that the request never led to a collaboration.
That suit was one of a flurry of court actions that the political parties filed before the election, apparently because lawsuits that are filed after the fact — for example, after an election loss — are regularly dismissed if the issue at stake could have been raised earlier.
“The timing of these suits suggests the Republicans were looking at issues they thought were questionable and getting their markers set in case an election turned out like this one,” said Mitch Kokai, the senior political analyst for the conservative John Locke Foundation in Raleigh.
In this case, the argument that thousands of voters were illegally registered was ready for use not just by Judge Griffin, but by Donald Trump or any other Republican who might have suffered a close election loss in the state. In fact, three G.O.P. state legislators who narrowly lost their races also protested the results….
Here’s what’s going on: An incumbent Democratic Supreme Court justice, Allison Riggs, won her race by 734 votes. With about 5.5 million votes cast, that’s as narrow as it gets, but she won. Lots of recounts confirmed it. It’s done.
Except… the North Carolina GOP planted a backup plan in the system: a “zombie lawsuit” challenging the eligibility of certain voters who, per The New York Times, “unknowingly registered, sometimes years or decades ago, using erroneous forms that did not clearly require applicants to provide the last four digits of a driver’s license or a Social Security number as proof of identity.”
To stress: These are legitimate voters who were just given a bad form at some point. There’s even good reason to believe that many did in fact provide this information, but it was simply not included in the records because of clerical error. Plus, the vast majority of them would have provided proof of identity, like their driver’s license, when they actually voted.
Crucially, the RNC and North Carolina GOP made no effort to expedite their lawsuit and get a resolution before November 5th. Like all zombie lawsuits, this was strategically timed not to change the election rules or challenge voter eligibility before the election — but rather to create a lever for throwing out results if the election-deniers’ preferred candidates lost….
“NC Supreme Court blocks state from certifying Riggs as the winner in high court election”
The North Carolina Supreme Court issued an order on Tuesday blocking the state from certifying a winner in the race for a seat on the high court.
Granting the request of Republican Jefferson Griffin, who trails his opponent, Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs, by 734 votes, the court’s Republican majority issued a temporary stay that will prevent the State Board of Elections from certifying Riggs as the winner.
Anita Earls, the only other Democrat on the court alongside Riggs, dissented, writing that “the public interest requires that the court not interfere with the ordinary course of democratic processes as set by statute and the state constitution.”
Riggs recused herself from the case.
The very court which Griffin aims to join will now hear his challenge of over 60,000 ballots cast in the election and potentially decide a winner in the race….
“Federal judge sends Republican challenge of 60,000 ballots back to NC Supreme Court”
In a case that seeks to invalidate over 60,000 ballots cast in North Carolina’s Supreme Court election, a federal judge ruled that the state’s Republican-dominated high court should decide, instead of him.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Richard Myers, an appointee of President-elect Donald Trump, sent GOP candidate Jefferson Griffin’s lawsuit challenging his apparent loss in the November election back to the state Supreme Court.
“Should a federal tribunal resolve such a dispute?” Myers wrote. “This court, with due regard for state sovereignty and the independence of states to decide matters of substantial public concern, thinks not.”
The State Board of Elections has appealed Myers’ ruling to the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, attempting to keep the case in federal court. Griffin trails Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs by 734 votes following two recounts of the results. But he and the state Republican Party have challenged tens of thousands of votes, arguing that they were cast by ineligible voters….
“Riggs responds to Griffin’s request to delay certification of the NC Supreme Court election”
Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs asked a federal judge to deny Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin’s request for a preliminary injunction in his election case.
Riggs, a Democrat, leads Griffin, a Republican, by 734 votes in the race to retain her seat on the state’s highest court.
A quick resolution to the case is in the public interest, Riggs’ brief says. Under state law, Riggs keeps her seat until the election is decided. But there’s a risk that someone, including Griffin, could argue that decisions are being made by an improperly elected official, the brief says.
“That risk is particularly unacceptable for election protests that seek to disenfranchise thousands of North Carolina voters by changing the rules after the election concludes.”
Griffin wants to throw out more than 60,000 votes he says were cast by people who are ineligible. Most of the ballots he objects to were cast by people he claims did not provide driver’s license or partial Social Security numbers on their voter registration applications. Republican lawyers argue these voters are not legally registered.
He has also challenged overseas and military voters because they did not submit photo IDs with their ballots, and has challenged overseas voters who have never lived in the state but whose parents were eligible North Carolina voters before they left the country.
The State Board of Elections has rejected all of Griffin’s protests, but has not yet certified the results. Griffin asked US District Judge Richard Myers II for a preliminary injunction to prevent the Board of Elections from certifying the results, which would mean Riggs’ reelection.
In the brief opposing the preliminary injection, a lawyer for Riggs wrote that those votes Griffin wants to throw out must be counted….
“Legal challenges delay election result for North Carolina Supreme Court seat”
“A North Carolina Supreme Court Candidate’s Bid to Overturn His Loss Is Based on Theory Election Deniers Deemed Extreme”
Months before voters went to the polls in November, a group of election skeptics based in North Carolina gathered on a call and discussed what actions to take if they doubted any of the results.
One of the ideas they floated: try to get the courts or state election board to throw out hundreds of thousands of ballots cast by voters whose registrations are missing a driver’s license number and the last four digits of a Social Security number.
But that idea was resisted by two activists on the call, including the leader of the North Carolina chapter of the Election Integrity Network. The data was missing not because voters had done something wrong but largely as a result of an administrative error by the state. The leader said the idea was “voter suppression” and “100%” certain to fail in the courts, according to a recording of the July call obtained by ProPublica.
This novel theory is now at the center of a legal challenge by North Carolina appeals court Judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican who lost a race for a state Supreme Court seat to the Democratic incumbent, Allison Riggs, by just 734 votes and is seeking to have the result overturned.
The state election board dismissed a previous version of the challenge, which is now being considered in federal court. Before the election, a Trump-appointed judge denied an attempt by the Republican National Committee to remove 225,000 voters from the rolls based on the same theory.
The latest case is getting attention statewide and across the country. But it has not yet been reported that members of the group that had helped publicize the idea had cast doubt on its legality….
he theory Griffin is citing originated with a right-wing activist, Carol Snow, who described herself to ProPublica in an email as “a Bona Fide Grade-A Election Denier.” Snow promoted it with the help of the state chapter of the Election Integrity Network, a national group whose leader worked with President Donald Trump in his failed effort to overturn the 2020 election. The network also was behind extensive efforts to prepare to contest a Trump loss this year in other states, as ProPublica has reported, as well as in North Carolina, according to previously unreported recordings and transcripts of meetings of the state chapter.
State election officials have found that missing information on a voter’s registration is not disqualifying because there are numerous valid reasons for the state’s database to lack that those details.
Those reasons include voters registering before state paperwork was updated about a year ago to require that information or using alternate approved documents, such as a utility bill, to verify their identities. What’s more, voters must still prove their identity when casting a ballot — most often with a driver’s license. “There is virtually no chance of voter fraud resulting from a voter not providing her driver’s license or social security number on her voter registration,” attorneys for the state election board wrote in response to the RNC lawsuit….