Ben Ginsberg in the Carolina Journal:
Jefferson Griffin’s attempts to invalidate 60,000 North Carolina voters bear haunting parallels to what Al Gore supporters tried to do late in the 2000 Florida recount to take away George W. Bush’s victory. I was the Bush-Cheney campaign’s national counsel, and as Republicans, we were outraged by the unprincipled attempts to disenfranchise voters to steal a win.
Imitating the Gore playbook, Griffin is trying to overturn a historically close election by changing the election’s rules after it was conducted and disenfranchising thousands of otherwise legal voters, not because they did anything wrong, but because of election officials’ instructions.
Griffin’s efforts should fail for the same reasons Al Gore’s did. In 2000, the US Supreme Court recognized that changing the rules fundamentally violates the rule of law. And not even the highly partisan Florida Supreme Court could swallow disqualifying otherwise legal voters to swing an election.
As a Republican election lawyer for 40 years, I’m for Republicans winning judicial elections. But not like this. Not when Griffin has not identified any fraudulent voters or ballots not cast in compliance with official election guidance. And not when Griffin has to ask his fellow judges to abandon principle to achieve his own electoral success. He lost a heartbreakingly close race. It happens. But it is wrong to disqualify voters who may have voted against you because of administrators’ perceived errors.
As in Florida 2000, it is fair game to adjudicate State Board of Elections’ procedures or overseas voters’ eligibility before the election. But Griffin did not succeed in his preelection attempts. So his lack of electoral success makes his post-election challenges nothing more than distasteful sour grapes aimed at disenfranchising voters in areas won by his opponent…,
It should be embarrassing for Judge Jefferson Griffin to make — and ask his fellow judges to buy — his arguments to disenfranchise legal voters, especially members of our military. Ambitious candidates may not always stick to principles, but judges must. As in Florida 2000, such an attack on the rule of law must be rejected.