The NYT has one all about ballot design.
And another replaying some debates about electing judges that will be very familiar to domestic versions of the same question.
And still another reviewing the political dynamics of the elections right now.
And the AP talks to some voters trying to wade through it all.
I mentioned Mexico’s historic upcoming judicial elections a few days ago, but hadn’t then focused on the campaign finance regime. Now the NYT digs a little deeper:
They weren’t allowed to buy ads on television, radio, billboards or online. Mexico barred them from public funding or receiving campaign contributions. National debates were difficult, if not impossible, to mount.
So people running to be judges across Mexico were largely left with social media.
In one widely seen video, one Supreme Court candidate argued that he was as well seasoned as the fried pork sold on the streets. Another Supreme Court candidate styled herself Dora the Transformer, a spin on the cartoon character Dora the Explorer. Another Supreme Court candidate used dating apps so that, in his words, prospective voters could match with justice and then chat about the issues.
The strict campaign limits, in contrast to traditional rules for presidential or congressional elections, are part of Mexico’s sprawling, first-ever elections on Sunday. Voters will choose nearly 2,700 federal and state judicial positions at every level of the courts, with federal seats, like those on the Supreme Court, chosen at the national level and a host of officials elected locally.
The Civil Rights Division is out with its first new voting case of the new Administration, and it comes directly out of the long-contested Riggs/Griffin race for the North Carolina Supreme Court.
In the Riggs/Griffin contest, there were three main categories of ballots contested after election day. The largest was a group of voters who allegedly never submitted driver’s license numbers or Social Security digits with their voter registration forms, in part because the state voter registration form at the time didn’t tell the voters they had to. There were reasons to believe that a sizable chunk of these voters actually did submit the relevant digits, which were just not captured in the state’s voter registration database (and other problems involving contesting not all of these voters, but only those voters who voted by mail, and contesting the ballots after the election). But I think it’s uncontested that the state voter registration form didn’t require the information that it should have, under HAVA, for some stretch of time.
[Update 5/29: the above paragraph used to say that the form “didn’t ask for the information,” which isn’t accurate: it was requested, but not required. h/t to Bob Hall for the correction.]
Now enter the DOJ. There’s a fair amount of throat-clearing in the complaint, but it boils down to an assertion that the state violated federal law by not requiring the right info when it registered voters. That … seems right.
What follows next is a little different: the remedy sought here is a bit legally tricky. Despite some early reports to the contrary, DOJ’s complaint does NOT assert that any voter should be purged or unregistered (and even if they were later to assert it, I don’t think that they have that authority). North Carolina was already in the process of fixing the voter registration form last year (and appears to have fixed it by now). The remedial portion that sticks out most is that DOJ wants to force the state to contact all North Carolina voters without a driver’s license number or Social Security digits in the system, to try to get the relevant numbers (and to just issue a unique ID number if they get no response), but it’s not clear that 1) all of the voters in the system without such a number actually failed to submit the right number, 2) that this is actually required by HAVA as a remedy, or 3) it would be all that big of a deal if the state sent such a note, properly phrased so as not to unnecessarily freak people out.
One saving grace: it’s extremely likely that there are large numbers of both Republicans and Democrats likely to be affected by the state’s glitch, and so unlike the cherry-picking in Judge Griffin’s contest, there’s reason for all actors involved not to be too terribly hamhanded about the resolution.
The Kansas City Star reports the latest on a plan to switch from merit elections to direct elections for the Kansas Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the International Crisis Group summarizes the landscape ahead of Mexico’s impending June 1 elections, when the country will, for the first time, elect close to 2600 judges.
AP:
The Republican challenger for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat has conceded last November’s election to the Democratic incumbent.
Jefferson Griffin said in a statement to The Associated Press on Wednesday that he would not appeal a federal judge’s decision favoring Associate Justice Allison Riggs. Griffin’s decision sets the stage for Riggs to be officially elected to an eight-year term as an associate justice. It would end the nation’s last undecided race from the 2024 general election.
You can read the detailed analysis at this link. Here is the core holding:
The court concludes that the retroactive invalidation of absentee ballots cast by overseas military and civilian voters violates their substantive due process rights, and that the cure process violates their equal protection rights. The court further concludes that the lack of any cure process for individuals erroneously designated as Never Residents violates their procedural due process rights and represents an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote. Based on those conclusions, the State Board may not implement the stated cure process or “remove” the votes of all Never Residents “from the final count of the 2024 election for Supreme Court Seat 6.”
In the remedy portion of the order, the court orders Justice Riggs to be certified the winner. The ruling is on hold for 7 days to give Judge Griffin a chance to appeal to the 4th Circuit (and then potentially to the U.S. Supreme Court).
I expect any appeal would be rejected. Although part of the due process portion of the court’s analysis rests on Bush v. Gore, and not every court would agree on reading Bush v. Gore in this way, the due process arguments are nonetheless extremely strong even without relying on that case. And the equal protection arguments are even stronger.
The idea of retroactively changing the rules for which ballots should count—and applying those retroactive rules just selectively in places where the challenging candidate expects to gain relative votes—sure is unconstitutional in any election system that values the rule of law. The only surprise (and disappointment) here is that the North Carolina Supreme Court was willing to bless this attempted election subversion.
For months, Republicans in North Carolina have tried to do what President Trump and his allies could not in 2020: overturn an election that did not go their way.
What began as a sprawling effort to throw out 65,000 votes from the state’s Supreme Court election in November has shrunk to a legal skirmish over a small fraction of those ballots. But even as Republicans’ path to victory has narrowed, the final outcome still hangs in the balance.
And even if the Democratic candidate’s victory is not reversed, the battle may have sketched a blueprint for overturning future elections.
Never before, legal experts from both parties say, has a losing candidate gained so much legal traction in trying to nullify votes cast by people who followed every instruction given to them, both when they registered to vote and when they submitted their ballots. Federal and state judges have shown a willingness to entertain Republican challenges of votes in Democratic-leaning areas that focused on technicalities and sought to reinterpret voting laws long after Election Day.
The episode, which in many ways is an acceleration of the right-wing movement challenging the 2020 presidential election, could encourage election challenges from candidates who lose fairly but are inclined to fight the outcome. More races could be subject to litigation after the polls close, as candidates try to wipe out votes with help from friendly courts and deep-pocketed legal campaigns.
“The stakes are far greater than one seat on the State Supreme Court,” said Bob Orr, who served on the North Carolina Supreme Court as a Republican but has since left the party to become unaffiliated. He likened some of the recent judicial decisions clearing a path for votes to be tossed out retroactively to “opening up a Pandora’s box.”
“You’ve got a set of rules, and you don’t wait until the ballgame is over and then say, ‘Oh, by the way, I think we need to change the rules and change the score,’” Mr. Orr added….
Nearly six months after the North Carolina Supreme Court election took place, the contest still hasn’t been called and a winner still hasn’t been certified.
That’s almost entirely due to a barrage of litigation from Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin, who sued for more than 65,000 ballots to be thrown out after they had been cast, triggering a sprawling legal saga that is testing some of the most solid precedents of election law. The effort, if successful, could be more than enough to swing the results of the election, as Griffin currently trails Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs by roughly 700 votes.
But even if the push ultimately falls short, Griffin’s critics, who include members of both parties, say it could have long-lasting consequences and pave the way for more candidates to pursue challenges — no matter how legally questionable — to the results of elections decided by narrow margins.
Chris Marshall took care to cast a ballot last fall while in France tending to his business, and was surprised to find months after the 2024 election that Judge Jefferson Griffin wanted his vote thrown out.
Griffin challenged Marshall and thousands of other military and overseas absentee voters who did not provide photo ID with their ballots. The State Board of Elections did not require it. Most military and civilian overseas voters cast ballots using a special portal that does not provide a way to include a photo.
Griffin worked to have their votes in the Supreme Court race tossed, but the state Supreme Court said they should have a chance to submit IDs.
Now back home in Durham, Marshall and his wife Moira Smullen tried to address the problem by checking to see if they could submit photos using the same electronic portal they used to vote. They couldn’t.
“Right now, it’s just wait and see what happens,” he said.
For additional coverage of a case that Rick H. has been following (see here and here), check out this NYT piece:
In North Carolina, the Republican candidate for a State Supreme Court seat has refused to concede to the Democratic incumbent, even though two recounts by a state elections board confirmed that he lost the November election by a few hundred votes.
The Republican challenger, Judge Jefferson Griffin, who currently sits on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, has instead embarked on an extraordinary monthslong effort to toss out scores of ballots. The race is the last in the nation to be uncertified.
Judge Griffin’s challenge has ping-ponged through federal and state courts. The Democratic incumbent, Justice Allison Riggs, appealed a recent State Supreme Court decision that could lead to thousands of military and overseas ballots being tossed.
On Tuesday, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit temporarily blocked the ballot verification process that had been ordered by the State Supreme Court. Many of the ballots in question come from Democratic-leaning counties, so their removal could lead to the election being overturned.
The court’s order stops what is likely an unconstitutional attempt approved by North Carolina state courts to overturn the results an election to the North Carolina Supreme Court.
I’ve written about the irreparable harm from the district court’s allowing a cure process here and here.
The Fourth Circuit panel explained that its stay order was necessary “[in] furtherance of federal jurisdiction.” It did not offer a detailed analysis. The dissent argued that the court had no jurisdiction to issue this order as it was an unappealable temporary restraining order, and that the district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the cure process to go forward.
Democracy Docket: “Judges Toby Heytens and Paul Niemeyer — who were appointed by former Presidents Joe Biden and George H. W. Bush, respectively — approved the halt, while Trump-appointee Judge Marvin Quattlebaum dissented.”
What happens now is that things will slow down. The trial court will decide if Justice Riggs has a good constitutional case on the merits. Whoever loses that will likely appeal to the Fourth Circuit (likely before a different panel, if today’s order was from a motion’s panel), with the case potentially ending up at the Supreme Court. I expect things will continue to be expedited, but it will take months more to fully resolve.
You can read Judge Griffin’s brief at this link. It briefly cites Bush v. Gore, but completely ignores the main point about irreparable harm that Justice Scalia first flagged in his Bush v. Gore stay concurrence. See here.
The state election board’s brief, also filed today, makes the point succinctly:
Fourth, an injunction is in the public interest. Implementing a state election process “of questionable legality . . . cast[s] a cloud upon” “the legitimacy of [the] election.” Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 1046, 1047 (2000) (Scalia, J., concurring). “Count first, and rule upon legality afterwards, is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance democratic stability requires.” Id.
Riggs’ case is assigned number 25-1397 in the Fourth Circuit. There are three other requests for stays from other parties that will likely be consolidated.
I wrote at Slate about the disaster of the district court’s order:
In a preliminary order issued over the weekend likely designed to split the baby, a federal district court in North Carolina has told North Carolina election officials that they should follow a state court’s ruling to figure out which of thousands of military and overseas ballots cast by North Carolina voters should be thrown out in a dispute over the winner of a November state Supreme Court election. But the federal court also told election officials not to certify the winner of that election until it can decide if the state court–ordered remedy is unconstitutional.
This is a recipe for disaster. The federal court should have heeded the advice of Justice Antonin Scalia in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case about not allowing a questionable redo of vote totals to be announced before there’s been a ruling on the legality of the redo. The judge’s order in North Carolina could well lead people to believe the state Supreme Court election was stolen no matter what happens.
Here’s the order issued Saturday:
This matter comes before the court on Intervenor-Defendant Allison Riggs’ emergency motion for injunction and motion for status conference [DE 37]. Pursuant to the court’s authority under the All Writs Act, the motion is GRANTED IN PART. Defendant North Carolina State Board of Elections is ORDERED to proceed in accordance with the North Carolina Court of Appeals opinion, Griffin v. N.C. State Bd. of Elections, No. COA25-181, 2025 WL 1021724 (N.C. Ct. App. Apr. 4, 2025), as modified by the North Carolina Supreme Court in its April 11 Order, but SHALL NOT certify the results of the election, pending further order of this court. Further, the court adopts the following briefing schedule to facilitate prompt resolution of this matter: each party may file an opening brief addressing the remaining federal issues no later than April 21, 2025. Response briefs shall be due no later than April 25, 2025. Replies shall be due April 28, 2025. Unless the court finds that oral argument will aid the decisional process, it intends to rule on the papers as soon as practicable
The court also ordered the North Carolina State Board of Elections to provide “notice to the court of the scope of its remedial efforts, including the number of potentially affected voters and the counties in which those voters cast ballots.”